


What Falls For Love

by apocryphic (orphan_account), bravest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angel Dean, Blood and Torture, Canon-Typical Violence, Community: deancasbigbang, Human Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:23:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/apocryphic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravest/pseuds/bravest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An angel of the lord going by the human name of Dean is told to make contact with his current charge, Castiel, on Heaven's list of prophets-to-be. Castiel is swept up in a war waged by angels and demons, and both the angel playing human and the human playing prophet learn things are never as simple as they seem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> rad amounts of thanks to [bexy](theyreabsolute.tumblr.com), a FANTASTIC beta that made everything already written that much better; our amazing [artist](elysiant.livejournal.com), who worked ridiculously hard (you can see how much [here](http://elysiant.livejournal.com/874.html)!); and finally, to [mary kate teske](http://marykateteske.tumblr.com), who gave us her permission to use the beautiful [poem](http://marykateteske.tumblr.com/post/43742237243/typewriter-poem-121) that started it all.

 

 

### chapter one

It was the end of another long day, the fulfilling kind that left Castiel feeling drained but content. Volunteering wasn't always easy, of course, but tonight had been a good nightat the homeless shelter. A great night, in fact, and he was determined not to let it sour, despite the odd, insistent feeling he'd been watched on his way home. He shoved his hands in his pockets, fingertips playing with the key ring there, making the keys jingle before taking out his phone. The screen displayed a text notification from Anna, one of his rare friends.

_any news on the nightmare front?_

He had nearly forgotten that he'd told her about his recurring nightmares. Her enthusiasm had been out of genuine concern for him, he was sure, but her spiel about them having to mean something or some grand significance — _that_ he could've done without. He tried to think up a quick response, but the odd discomfort he couldn't shake that he was being watched, being followed, was too distracting. He put his phone away and sped up his walk, thankful that he lived close enough not to give into his nightmare-induced paranoia.

The street lights shone down the sidewalk, filling the streets with that odd sepia tone only industrial lights could achieve. Castiel felt a chill down his back that had nothing to do with the cold crisp air around him, or the breeze softly ruffling through his hair. He hunched his shoulders against that chill, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his beige overcoat.

As much as he strained his ears he heard nothing but his own echoing footsteps in the deserted street; the sound bounced off of the tall apartment buildings and into alleys, then came back to him, eerie and distorted. There was no echo of a second pair of feet, no shuffling, and he told himself he was simply tired. It was just a _feeling_ , worsened by his recent bad dreams.

Shrugging his messenger bag higher up on his shoulder, Cas turned the corner, breathing a soft sigh of relief at the sight of his building. So maybe he was a little freaked out. It was a sort of force, non-threatening but still uncomfortable and worrying. He couldn’t shake the fact that it felt _big._

He chanced a quick glance behind him before jogging across the street, and after seeing no one there, he kept going until he was in the entrance of the building, quickly buzzing in the code and jumping up the last few steps while simultaneously pulling out the keys to his place from his pocket.

 _A shower_ , he thought to himself as he unlocked his door, _that's what I need_. A warm, soapy shower and then a nice cup of tea before bed would make him forget all about this. Once inside, he kicked off his shoes, dumped his bag near them, and closed the door behind him, leaving the rest of the world and whatever was out there on the other side.

The following day was a Saturday. It was a nice one, too, with warm rays of sun pouring in from every window. After a quick breakfast he headed out for the old library. The walls were adorned with golden frames all along the top, while the ceilings were covered by ancient peeling paintings depicting various mythological and religious scenes. It reminded him of the church he had grown up in.

At the back of the building was the sunroom Castiel frequented, always warm and comforting. Save for an old lady with a stack of knitting books, the only other soul present was a man that looked like he belonged at a rock concert. Castiel's eyes swept over him quickly and took in his messy hair, his rings and bracelets. He got a strong whiff of his leather jacket (and something else, something vague but that made him think of static electricity) as he walked past him and he wrinkled his nose. The man was flipping through a worn issue of _Cosmo_ like it was perfectly natural, and Cas took his place at his usual table, the one at the far end of the room. He was here to peruse the books he'd picked out earlier, and he had an intuition sitting near this guy would end in conversation. Castiel tended to trust his instincts, as they were often right. It was a gift, his mother had once said.

He quickly forgot about the other man, however, as he pored over his books. The room was warm, almost stifling, the sunlight piercing through and filling it with a hazy heat. Castiel felt like a cat, ready to fall asleep in a beam of sunlight, and it wasn't long before his eyelids grew heavy. He closed the book of poetry he’d been reading, and stretched his arms above his head and leaned back from the chair. He stifled a yawn and watched the cars drive by outside for a few minutes before looking around at the room that was free of all patrons but he and the older woman now. Good, maybe the guy had realized _Cosmo_ wasn't his type of literature.

Maybe later he could ask Anna or Balthazar if they wanted to go out. Although the last time he had invited his friends over, it had ended in a pizza being ordered. His cooking skills were sub-par.

"So I'm taking this _Cosmo_ quiz," a voice spoke from behind him - close, too close - and Cas nearly fell out of his chair trying to jerk away while also attempting to twist around to glare at the offender. Had he not made an idiot of himself within the first three seconds he might have been more open to being accosted, but it was with distaste that he looked over the man in the leather jacket. He hadn't left, after all, just snuck up behind him. He was steadily confirming Castiel's suspicions that he was a creep.

"Excuse me?" he snapped, trying to convey with his entire body how badly he _did not want to do this_.

"I'm taking this _Cosmo_ quiz," the other man repeated, lifting the magazine held closed with a finger tucked inside to save his spot. The lady on the cover looked overjoyed in the most plastic way. _QUIZ! Do you know when a guy is into you?_ was spelled out in gaudy colored letters.

Castiel's lips thinned in a line, and he looked back up at the man, unimpressed. That had to be the worst way he'd ever been hit on — if that was what this was. It was either that or this guy had no boundaries and no idea how to strike up conversation with strangers.

"I need a hand with some of these questions. Who knew these things were so complex?" He grinned, as if laughing at a private joke. The man's grin was almost cute, all enthusiasm and eagerness, and Castiel squared his shoulders and looked away from the stranger's beaming face. He reminded himself that a nice smile did not mean a nice guy. Still, it made him want to humor him, so he rested his arm on the back of the chair, giving him a small smile, eyebrows raised and expectant.

"Sneaking up on people isn't the best way to strike up conversation," he said, and the man's face shifted briefly, a flicker there that was shut down before Castiel could make out what it was. "I would also suggest bringing your _Cosmo_ to a 16 year old girl, since that's their demographic," he continued, giving the man another look, a sharp jab.

Leather Jacket's grin returned, full force, and he slumped down on the chair next to Castiel as if he belonged there.

"Awesome, so you'll help me out."

He opened the magazine and held it to his face, raising his eyebrows and looking at Castiel over it. Castiel didn't need to see the stranger's mouth to know that _that grin_ was plastered there. Castiel didn't answer him for a few seconds, eyeing him as he wondered if this was worth it, or if he should grab his books and go. Then the stranger _waggled_ his eyebrows at him and Castiel let out a snort and caught himself amused and okay, fine, he could humor him.

"This is already terrible, but alright, continue," he said with a sigh, leaning back on his chair and crossing his arms, bringing a hand to rub at the side of his jaw and neck. The guy radiated, which was a dumb thing to think but he'd never met anyone it was more applicable to than this man.

"Okay," Leather Jacket said, undeterred. He cleared his throat, shaking the magazine once as if straightening a newspaper. "Say you work with some new guy and he's pretty cute, and he's got everyone friended on Facebook or whatever, but not you," he started, and Castiel waited for the rest. The guy peeked out over the top of the pages again, as if to make sure Castiel was still there. "Do you: a, avoid him at work since he _obviously_ ,"there was a puff of breath there, almost a laugh, "has a problem with you; b, friend him since it'll only take a few posts to figure out how he feels; or c, hold strong 'cause he's no doubt smitten and trying to be cool about it."

The magazine came down to reveal the man eyeing him with a look of barely contained laughter. The answers were ridiculous, but he expected no less of a publication intended for teens. Leather Jacket was far from subtle, though, and Castiel held up a finger at him, tilting his head.

"Wait, so is this me helping you make a choice, or are you asking me in a roundabout way?"

"What, you think a guy like me," and here he pointed a finger at himself, letting the magazine flop on the table in one hand, "could pull a move like that?"

"Yes. Without hesitation," Castiel answered. Leather Jacket nodded, his eyes reflecting only amusement. Castiel couldn't shake the impression that what he was seeing was layer upon layer of lacquer, as if to deflect from what was underneath.

"So are you gonna answer the question or do I need to find another tall dark and mysterious to play _Cosmo_ girl with?"

A soft huff of laughter escaped Castiel's lips and he shifted in his chair to distract from it, resting his chin in the palm of his hand as he leaned his elbow on the surface of the table. No, he wasn't amused, this guy had just called him _Tall dark and mysterious._ It couldn't get cheesier than that. _That’s_ what  he was thinking this of the guy with silver rings, a leather jacket and a _Cosmo_ in his hands.

"What's your name, Leather Jacket?"

The man glanced down at himself and pursed his lips, as if to confirm that yes, he was wearing a leather jacket.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," he said when he lifted his eyes back to Castiel, winking. Castiel grimaced, his eyes narrowing to slits.

"You're _terrible_ at this," Castiel said with what was half exasperation, half awe. He considered himself socially inept, but this went beyond his own shortcomings.

"Is that an invitation to use you as more practice?"

"The opposite, actually."

The man held his hand out to Castiel, who looked down at it doubtfully. He tried not to absorb anything to remember about the stranger, not his fingers or his rough looking palms.

"Hi, I'm Dean," the man said, and he _beamed_ again, grinned like he was the sun Castiel was tethered to. Something churned in Castiel's stomach that he didn't like in the least, and he took the man's hand to shake it more harshly than he'd intended. Something caused his heart to beat faster and he vaguely attributed it to fear.

"Castiel," he said, doing his best to keep his face absent of that shift he'd felt inside. Dean gripped his hand just as tight in return and then let go, and suddenly the fear snapped and disappeared like it had never been there in the first place.

"A pleasure to meet you, Cas. Can I call you Cas? I'm calling you Cas," Dean said matter-of-factly, barely pausing.

"Sure," Cas said with a slight frown; he was used to all sorts of responses to his name, none of them including _rolling with it_. This guy was something else for sure, and it wasn't just in his easygoing grin or the faint smell of static electricity or his terrible flirting. It wasn’t the splatter of freckles on the bridge of his nose that spread in a loose pattern onto his cheeks. Wait, why was he noticing this guy's freckles? Castiel blinked, sat up straight and cleared his throat, trying to shake off this feeling, to turn the unfamiliar exhilarating fear into disinterest.

"Alright, Cas it is." Dean slapped the table with the flat of his hand, startling the old lady on the other side of the room. Dean's voice was strangely affectionate, final too, like this was the end of the start of something. "You still haven't answered the question, bee-tee-dubs."

"Bee-tee-dubs? Really?"

"Yeah, like aysap, tee-tee-why-el, you know."

"Ugh, just stop talking." Castiel rolled his eyes and looked away, gathering the books spread on the table, making a neat pile with them. "Your choice of literature is influencing you, and not helping your case."

Dean's hand reached for the book at the very top of Castiel's pile as Castiel spoke and he began to flip through it, eyebrows raised. Anger flashed through Castiel, and it was with no qualms that he swiped the book from Dean's hands with narrowed eyes. Who did this guy think he was? His attempts to flirt were pathetic at best and yes, okay, he had a great smile and a twinkle in his eyes (did he really just think _twinkle_ , he had to get out of here), but that didn't make any of this okay. He was acting too comfortable, too easy and relaxed, and that was making Cas _un_ comfortable.

Dean's hands stayed where they were,  looking like they were holding an invisible book. He hummed thoughtfully as Cas put the book back in its rightful place on top of the pile, and his hands returned to the table, fingers beating against the surface.

"Looks like you're not too proud of your own reading material," he said, and that stupid grin was back, except this time it was _taunting_ Cas. He refused to take the bait, moved his books away from Dean (tucking them in the bend of his elbow, arm protectively cradling them), and glared down at the other man's hands. It was an excuse not to see that shit-eating grin, at the very least.

"Stop that." His mind tried to find a semi-polite way to say _you are an actual child and as much as you intrigue me I find you utterly irritating_ , but came up empty. "You are an actual child and as much as you intrigue me I find you utterly irritating," he said, flat out.

"You think I'm intriguing?"

Shit. He hadn't thought that one through. Dean's lopsided smile greeted him and it was so smug and self-satisfied that it was verging on disgusting. It didn't stop Castiel's face from flushing, however, and it was suddenly very important that he leave. Immediately.

"I'm leaving," he declared as he stood from the chair, dropping his bag on the table to haphazardly throw his books into it. A hand grasped his arm and he jerked away from the touch. He glared at Dean — and why was his own breathing suddenly so erratic? He was getting worked up over nothing, over a moron try-hard with a nice smile.

"I'm obviously not a child," Dean said, and the way he looked at Cas stopped him short. For a brief instant Dean’s eyes looked worn and tired, but it was such a fleeting moment Cas thought he imagined it. Now there was a new emotion in them, something like longing and hunger for contact that Castiel couldn't truly give. Cas closed his bag slowly, his eyes staying locked with Dean's as he worked his jaw. He could mess with him in turn, but somehow he didn't have the heart to lead him on. Instead he shouldered his bag, now heavier with the weight of the books, and gave Dean his best apologetic look.

"I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree."

There, that was simple enough, vague enough, and Dean could assume what he wanted. It mattered little to Cas what this guy thought when he'd never see him again.

"You know what they say about assuming."

"It makes an ass out of you and me, right," Castiel muttered, before adding: "I should go." He was the one making an ass of himself now, and maybe the guy was just awful at making friends or too forward or something. Maybe there'd been nothing behind his advances but an attempt to reach out and connect.

"You can't leave yet."

A hand touched his arm briefly and he looked over at Dean again, their eyes locking before Castiel's gaze fell to his shoes. The floor was less confusing to look at than Dean's eyes at the moment. There had been an edge to Dean’s voice when he'd spoken, and Cas didn't know the man well enough to know what it meant, just that it was genuine. That little 'yet', though, tacked on so easily at the end of the sentence, seemed out of place for two people who had just met each other.

"Yet?"

"Yeah, I haven't gotten to ask you out," Dean grinned, the cheekiness back in place as if that moment of truth had never happened. Castiel bristled immediately, his mouth thinning to a line.

"No," he said without thinking, perhaps sharper than intended. "I thought you were telling me I was assuming wrong seconds ago."

 "Aw, c'mon. Since when is dating more than two attractive people going out to eat, huh?"

Cas' eyes locked with Dean's again, and he fixed him with his stare, trying to see if he could tell what this really was.

"You've got a strange flirting method," Cas muttered after he finally looked away. He sighed, standing there a little awkwardly, arms at his side. Dean remained silent, and their eyes met again. Dean blinked, tilted his head slightly, and oh, was he seriously _pouting_? His lower lip was jutting out, his eyes wide and blinking and he was really doing this, wasn't he. Cas glowered as his hand dug into his bag, searched for something and came back with a small notepad. He glared as he pulled out a pen, ripped a piece of paper out and briefly debated scribbling a fake number on it. He folded it more times than necessary, and then held it up to Dean's face, squeezed between his thumb and forefinger.

"You get one call. I reserve the right to hang up on you if I hear anything that would be more appropriate coming from a 16 year old's mouth."

Dean's face brightened then, like a kid winning the first prize, and he snatched the piece of paper from Castiel's fingers. Ugh, that _face_ , it was so overjoyed and overly excited that Cas found it borderline irritating. He suddenly couldn't remember if he'd written his actual number on there or not. Before Dean could say anything, Castiel brushed past him and walked out, leaving Dean with the dust motes floating aimlessly in the filtering light of the sun.

He didn't look back.

 

* * *

 

That night he slipped into a restful sleep. It grew agitated as the hours went by, and soon enough his constant nightmare returned. He was tied to something, being tortured by a face he couldn't see. The questions were always the same, but he was called different names and felt like a different person every time. No matter how many times this dream came to him, the terror and fear gripping at his stomach was real. He wanted to wake up but he couldn't, full of the knowledge that he had to wait for his dream self to die. He knew it wasn't real, he knew he would wake up afterward, and yet the pain and fear were so strong he felt sick with it. In his dream, he cringed and looked away from the shadowed face of his torturer, knowing the moment would come soon enough.

Except, just as his faceless enemy was lowering the blade to his throat for the final blow — someone else came.

Castiel woke up blinking away light, confused and disoriented. His heart was hammering in his chest as it always was after his nightmares; it only ratcheted up further when he struggled to get out of his sweaty sheets. The last moments of his nightmare were fading too quickly before he could commit them to memory. He remembered flitting pieces of it:  hearing someone, the shape of a man appearing, a _force_ suddenly in the room, a voice followed by a bright, blinding light. The very light that woke him as if it was being shone right into his closed eyelids. He could still see spots behind them when he closed his eyes, and he rubbed and rubbed at them until his alarm sounded, until the flickering images of his dream faded and the fear in his heart was erased by the slow inhale and exhale of his lungs.

The brief thought _I should tell Anna about this_ crossed his mind before being tossed out by the much more instinctual need to empty his bladder. He stepped into his shower soon after, like he was on auto-pilot. It lasted longer than usual, but he barely noticed, and when Castiel was done he felt refreshed, clean and ready for the day.

The change in his dream had been shoved far in his mind, and so had the strange familiarity of the voice that had accompanied it.

 

 


	2. Chapter Two

"They have fast food on every corner at this point. Humanity's come a long way, Sam. High cholesterol and blood clots caused by laziness paired with a keen denial of anything that damns 'em? It's a far cry from all of that pyramid-building however long ago."

  
Dean chomped on a french fry, pleased when the sharp bitter-tang of salt hit his taste buds. French fries were something worth saving. McDonald's did them well, Wendy's was getting there, and Chick-fil-a was on a level all its own, but Dean was determined to sample every kind of fry there was.  
  
Except for sweet potatoes. They weren't even a food as far as he was concerned.  
  
There was a sigh on the other end of the line, and Dean was left to wonder why exactly Sam had insisted on calling on the phone instead of just using the tried-and-true CB mental radio. Sure, it helped with appearances, especially since the last thing Dean had mentioned about pyramids had gotten one strange look from another patron at the table across from him, but even so, Dean would be sure to ask. Probably.  
  
"What are you doing?" Sam's voice gave away a hint of exasperation, and Dean's lips twitched before he shoved another couple of fries into his mouth, eyes settling on the man that had glanced at him before.  
  
"I'm enjoying my station, s'called a lunch break," Dean replied easily behind a mouthful of fried potato and sodium, popping the top off of his plastic cup to down the drink that way. Soda had the whole carbonation thing going on. Pepsi was sweeter, left a cool sugar taste that coated his mouth, and there was kinda a chemical flavor that hinted at the fact that no, it probably wasn't the best thing to drink. Ever. Coke was better at lacking the factory aftertaste, and it wasn't until Dean came to this conclusion that Sam clearing his throat drew him out of his drink-imposed daydreaming. "Oh. Uh, repeat that."  
  
"I said," Sam began, enunciating each word very clearly and patronizingly, "have you followed through on any of the orders ensuring the protection of the prophet-to-be yet?"  
  
"Yeah, of course." If walking up to the guy with a _Cosmo_ magazine and some bullshit questionnaire counted as following through on orders, then yes, Dean had done plenty to ensure the protection of the aforementioned prophet-to-be. "Keepin' an eye on him and making sure no gutter-eyes get to him, right?"  
  
"And..."  
  
Dean shot a look at the man who was now outright staring, making a face until the human stood up and walked away to throw his own meal in the trash with a _look_ casted back in Dean's direction. "And?"  
  
"You were supposed to establish contact already." Sam sounded miffed as per usual when Dean didn't take all the care that he could have. Dean brushed it off, eyes rolling as he dusted off his hands, phone pressed between his shoulder and ear. He knew what he was doing, he didn't need Sammy of all the other angels in his garrison hopping on his ass for being idle. Dean was the longest-running angel stationed on Earth; he knew humans, and he knew how to deal with one measly prophet.  
  
And he most definitely was not shirking John's orders.  
  
"I established contact. Eye contact. Dude's got some serious peepers, felt like he was staring into my very soul."  
  
"You don't have a —"  
  
"Shut up, I'm giving my report. It's a work in progress, yeah, but roll with it, Sam." Dean stood up and carried his bag of food to the disposal, tossing it in and snagging his drink from the table before he left. "He saw me, I saw him." Along with various pop culture questions meant for thirteen year old girls who still thought they were going to marry a celebrity. "I know exactly where he is right now, and if you give me two shakes, I'll be standing next to him."  
  
Sam sighed, definitely fringing on the edges of more than a little frustrated by now. "D—"  
  
" _Dean_ ," Dean interrupted, narrowing his eyes the slightest bit and lowering his voice from the sharp warning tone he'd taken. "C'mon, Sam. You know the deal. Play human, you gotta go all the way. Name and all. Otherwise you take all the enjoyment away from it."  
  
"I was about to call you that, if you had just waited another half of a second!" Sam was getting dangerously close to whining and that was something Dean did _not_ want to listen to in any dimensional plane.  
  
"Speaking of playing human, what's with the phone call?"  
  
If Sam was aware that Dean was changing the subject on purpose, he did nothing to make it known, staying silent until Dean had finished his question. He must have been staring at the screen on his side with something like distaste, because it took another couple of seconds for him to rattle off his reply, and by then Dean was already heading back to his table. There was a blond-haired woman sitting across the room that caught his attention, and as he walked past he heard a snippet of her conversation with the man beside her. Something about politics.  
  
So, something Dean didn't care about. He'd meddled enough in matters of politics.  
  
(The fact that the grand majority of humans thought that divine intervention was a thing only of the past seriously took some of the shine outta the job. Where was the fun when there was such little recognition? _Please_ , at least pray to some saint, try and give Dean a little prayer eavesdropping to take heart from. Last he'd heard, humans had made up some kind of saint for the internet of all things, which was a new flavor of bullshit, but hey, he could roll with that. It was something. Plus, he couldn't really blame them. The internet was a very, _very_ good invention. One of the best forms of civilized innovation. The human need for novelty was a beautiful thing.)  
  
"I'm paying a visit. Or, y'know, a longer visit than the one I'm taking now. I figured I need to start being more than just a little acquainted with the ways of getting in touch with humans," Sam explained. In turn, Dean's eyebrows shot up — more thanks to a conscious effort than any kind of reflex. He might have been using this vessel for upwards of thousands of years while he was on Earth, but muscle memory had a tendency to deteriorate over time instead of getting any better, go figure.  
  
"No kidding? Sammy's coming down to the grand ol' US of A?"  
  
"Don't." Sam cleared his throat. "Don't do that. I have my reasons. John doesn't particularly agree with me going, but you need backup."  
  
"Backup," Dean stated flatly, setting his eyes on the ceiling as if silently searching out Sam's face through it in the clouds so that he could punch him.  
  
"Yeah, backup. Eye contact isn't contact, Dean. That's called stalking. He probably thinks you're some kind of freak."  
  
The amusement in Sam's tone had Dean frowning and he scuffed a shoe on the floor while he sat back down, the restaurant noisy with the sound of activity. If Dean had to be honest with himself, he loved it, the hustle and bustle that humans got themselves into and the rush of it all. They really had no idea what a gift their ability to live was. Order and perfection were inconceivable here, an impossible paradise out of their reach, and none of them took true advantage of it the way they should have been doing from the very moment they opened their eyes. Dean basked in the muted chaos as he hummed an acknowledgement, Sam's words clear and audible despite the laughing and talking and bedlam going on around him.  
  
Every human was some kind of freak by their own standards they set. Dean blended easily.  
  
"Just get your ass down here, pronto," Dean answered, exhaling through his nose. "Or I'm shoving our mini-prophet onto Celebrity Apprentice. I doubt he'd mind, he's the type for that kinda charity stuff."  
  
"So you _have_ been keeping an eye on him." Sam's voice had gone from tired-of-his-shit to know-it-all satisfaction way too quickly. Dean decided to nip it in the bud.  
  
"Bye, Sam."  
  
And so he hung up, cutting Sam's objection off before he could get the words out completely. Dean huffed out a breath, shoving his phone back into his pocket and turning his attention back over to the diner, watching everyone get on with the lives they were so blessed to have, however unknowingly. Sam coming to Earth was awesome, he couldn't deny that, and Dean loved the idea, but John didn't like it, and that meant Dean didn't like it wholeheartedly either. A garrison leader was a garrison leader, after all, and nobody in their right mind screwed with their leader's orders for 'em. It was more than social suicide, it was begging to become a pariah in Heaven. Any rebel was as good as dead.  
  
Not that Dean was about to let that happen to his brother, but his previously carefree disposition shifted to something darker. He took the chance to glance around the area again, an easy sweep of his consciousness as he got to his feet, checking to be sure the tabletop was free of any crumbs or napkins left behind. No need to make more work for the people working, not when he was buddy-buddy with them, anyway. Dean put his elbows up on the front counter, leaning forward to look past the unfamiliar face of the woman sending him a funny expression and back into the kitchen, seeking out a form he knew well.  
  
"Heya, Benny!"  
  
One of the men turned around at the sound of his name and Dean gave a short wave, grinning at his friend. Human friend, obviously, Dean had to have some kind of company down on Earth. With how long he'd spent scouring the place, he'd be damned if he _didn't_ have a friend or two.  
  
"Dean," Benny said, and there was a friendly and welcoming, if somewhat inquisitory, note in how he said Dean's name. "How long have you been wasting time in here?"  
  
"Oh, y'know. Not long." He shrugged nonchalantly and Benny raised an eyebrow without moving much else of his face. Talent. "Long enough to eat already. You seemed busy, I figured I'd wait until there weren't so many people practically throwing themselves at you for some grub."  
  
Dean slid into a chair at the counter while Benny toweled it down, waiting until he'd finished that before dropping his arms back onto the surface. Benny was a good man, loyal to the umpteenth degree to friends and family alike, and Dean admired that. Whether it was at three in the afternoon or three in the morning, Benny kept things running at all hours, and Dean took full advantage of that.  
  
"Now you know you don't ever have to wait here, you're more than a regular at this point," Benny warned, and Dean rolled his eyes. "If you'd had said something sooner, you would have gotten one of Elizabeth's desserts free with the meal."  
  
The sound of disappointment that Dean made must have been pitiful because Benny laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.  
  
"Next time, brother. What had you in such a twist you couldn't claim your bounty?"  
  
"It was Sam," Dean sighed, trying to look just sad enough to get one of the said desserts he'd missed out on, but Benny plaintively ignored him and Dean decided to salvage the rest of his dignity and continue. "He called, needed to talk about some things."  
  
"Sam, your brother? Everything okay on the familial side of things?"  
  
There was a note of uncertainty in Benny's voice and Dean was reminded once again of all that Benny had done to welcome him into town, from lending an ear about Dean's carefully edited dilemmas to paying heed to the specifically altered stories that kept him in the dark. Dean _wasn't_ lying, he was simply curtailing the truth to make sure Benny's conscience was clear. The human had never pried into his private life and had never made a habit of asking questions, but Dean caught the curious stares. Still, he wasn't about to tell Benny that he was a freakin' angel on neighborhood watch duty.  
  
"Yeah. Didn't mean to keep you in suspense over when I'd show up. I just hadn't been expecting him to actually use the phone is all. Something came up in the family business, had to make sure that it wasn't my problem to deal with."  
  
"Well," Benny said, drawing the word out slow as if he wasn't totally sure where he

was taking it, "glad it's settled for you."  
  
"Me too," Dean stated lamely, tapping his fingers on the counter without paying a whole lot of attention to the action itself. He cleared his throat. "But, uh. I gotta take my leave, I got a hot date, need to hammer out the kinks." Dean pushed off of the counter and started walking backwards in the vague direction of the door. "Might bring 'em here, actually, if you're up for reserving a table?"  
  
He could very nearly feel Benny relax a bit, as if Dean had diverted some kind of catastrophe by managing the conversation, however poorly.  
  
"You have to ask?" Benny fixed an amused look on him and Dean shrugged, an easy smile finding its way on his face. "Table next to the wall has your name on it and whoever this mystery date is. Hope it's not a blind one."  
  
"Nah, we met at the library, actually. He helped me with a surprisingly tricky test." Dean sounded awfully innocent and he told himself once again that what Benny didn't know wouldn't hurt him, couldn't hurt him, that he was doing this for his human friend's safety and security. "I dunno... he's almost like an _angel_ , man."  
  
"Dean, brother," Benny sighed, "you got yourself a handful. Don't you go getting your heart broken, now. I don't have the time to pick up any pieces."  
  
"Yeah, as if I'd be the spurned one."  
  
Benny laughed, and Dean snorted dismissively, giving his goodbye to the man as he pushed out of the restaurant. Benny was a shining example of the humans Dean had given his time and protection over to; though many angels looked down on them as inferior, Dean wholeheartedly _enjoyed_ the ones he kept company with, and he wasn't even close to being ashamed for calling Benny a friend.

He was halfway to the sidewalk when he was reminded that he did, in fact, actually have something he needed to be doing. Dean took out his phone and eyed the call screen thoughtfully before looking at the small piece of paper with Cas's number on it. As if he couldn't have gotten the number by himself without it being _given_ , though Dean would freely admit that it had been enjoyable to coax it out of the prophet. Most likely one of the only enjoyable times he'd have with this entire ordeal, but he was determined to make it slightly entertaining instead of settling for five-star difficulty babysitting.

 

Dean wondered briefly if it was bad etiquette to text instead of call, that way he could bypass the condition Cas had put into place and still have wiggle room for error. He shrugged off the moment of thought and typed out a message, lips pursed in appreciation.

_there's something wrong with your cell phone. it doesn't have my number in it._

That was a great way to greet someone, for sure. Now, it was only a matter of time and patience, both of which Dean liked to think he was plenty qualified in. Not so much where conversations over texting were involved, but he'd been on the Earth long enough to know that waiting wasn't worth fretting over, no matter what the uncomfortable clench in his chest said otherwise. He looked at his phone the second before it vibrated to alert him to a reply and grinned.

_Less googled pick up lines if you really want that chance to ask me out._

Dean didn't bother glancing up to make sure he wasn't about to run into anyone while he replied, writing it out without hesitation. It wasn't bad etiquette at all, he decided.

_you don't think i could have come up with that one on my own?_

His phone vibrated almost immediately.

 _No._  
  
Dean frowned, brows furrowing. Before he could begin replying, another message notification appeared.  
  
 _It was either cosmo or google._  
  
Instead of typing out a text to tell him just how wounded he was from the idea that he couldn't come up with such a brilliant diamond of a pick-up line on his own, Dean laughed and brought the phone to his ear, pressing call and waiting through the rings until Cas picked up.  
  
"I knew I should have gone with that _People_ magazine questionnaire," Dean lamented.  
  
"Hello to you too, Dean," Cas said with amusement, a good reaction, and Dean catalogued noticing this for later. "I don't think relying on second-rate gossip magazines is going to help you in the least."  
  
"You can't call _People_ second-rate." Dean made sure he sounded just the right amount scandalized, like Cas had just insulted his grandest achievement.  
  
"Can I call your flirting second-rate?"  
  
Dean paused, stuck somewhere between a laugh and a snarky counter, unable to decide which route to go. In the end he just let a snort out, shaking his head.  
  
"That's off limits, along with _Glamour_ magazine. I can't have you talking bad about all the things I love and hold dear."  
  
"You need to rethink your life if those are things you love and hold dear. It makes you seem shallow."  
  
"Hey now, I've been told by numerous credible sources that I'm a very deep and complex person. Speaking of, what's your sign?"  
  
"I'm hanging up now," Cas informed him, and Dean wasn't taking the chance to see if he was serious about it being a one-call-only deal.  
  
Not that it would be a problem to track him down again. Continuously reminding himself of that fact was getting repetitive.

"Not into horoscopes? Wait, hold up. I'll play nice."  
  
"I think you'll have a hard time with that, but okay. You have twenty minutes." Cas sounded like he was just about ready to start counting down the seconds himself, and somehow Dean wouldn't have been surprised if he set an alarm for exactly twenty minutes and kept his eyes on it throughout the conversation.  
  
"Alright, alright," Dean said, rolling his eyes. "So. Your day. How was it? I'm starting

from the basics, we can build up from there."  
  
"It was uneventful. What about yours, hit on any innocent guys just trying to find peace at the library?"  
  
Dean had to shut his mouth with a click of his teeth.  
  
"No, actually, I didn't," he said as if he was on brittle ground. "I had a positively invigorating talk with my brother and now I'm talking to you. Sounds like we both had uneventful days."  
  
"So you have a brother? Younger or older?"  
  
"Younger," was Dean's immediate reply. He'd told the same thing to other people, that he had a younger brother, a pseudo-sister, a pretty big family, and that normally stopped the questions.  
  
"Figures," Cas answered, and Dean was brought up short.  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"You just have the attitude — like you'd pull your brother's girlfriend aside to give her the 'I'll kill you if you hurt him' speech."  
  
"Guess it's good that my brother doesn't have a girlfriend, then. Wouldn't want to have to break out intimidation tactics." Dean couldn't tell if Cas was fucking with him or not, if he had just made that up for the sake of saying something or if he actually thought Dean was the kind of brother to pull something like that. "What about you, any siblings you have to lord over?"  
  
"No," he said, voice almost wistful, "no siblings. It must be nice, though."  
  
"It is," Dean said on reflex. "He can be a pain, but he knows what he's doing. Most of the time. Sam hounds my ass for things but it's only 'cause he knows I can deal with it." There was a note of pride as he spoke, unintentional but still there. Sam was good, better than most of the others — which was no doubt why he was trying to take leave and get stationed downstairs with Dean for a bit. Dean's nose wrinkled as he sighed at this, but his less than conventional methods weren't going to win Sam any favor with corporate.  
  
"You sound very proud of him."  
  
"Yeah," Dean said with a bit of surprise, disarmed thanks to the topic and the emotion — _satisfaction_? — that was showing through Cas's tone. "I am proud, he's, y'know. A good kid." If Dean had to keep spinning not-lies like this, he was going to run into some serious problems. "He's visiting soon," he finished finally.  
  
"Do you have any plans to take him somewhere?"  
  
Dean scuffed his feet a little harder against the ground as he walked, eyes falling to the asphalt as he made his way in circles around the block. He didn't have anywhere to be, after all, now that he'd made _contact_ with Cas. He could just kill time where he was already, and if something happened now he'd be able to hear it across the line. Easy peasy job, easy peasy protection.  
  
"He's not really from the area," Dean half-truthed in explanation, "so I'll probably be dragging him all across town. Or he'll be dragging me everywhere. I'd bet money on the latter if I was a gambling kind of guy."  
  
"Is that so," Cas murmured with a hint of distracted thought, and Dean felt like he'd moved up a couple of points in prophet boy's respect ledger. It was a good thing to know. For future endeavors at keeping the kid safe, naturally. He was at the top of the list of VIPs up in Heaven for a reason, not one that Dean fully knew, but it wasn't his job to ask questions.  
  
"Maybe you can meet him if you want, see if he's up to par with how I've talked him up."  
  
"We've barely met and you're already introducing me to your family?"  
  
"Why not?" Dean challenged, shrugging even though Cas couldn't see the gesture from across the line. "You two would get along. Probably. You've both got a certain quality."  
  
"I haven't even agreed to seeing you again, don't get ahead of yourself."  
  
"Sam doesn't have many friends, excuse me for trying to set up a playdate," Dean complained.  
  
"So you're trying to set me up with your brother?"  
  
"You really need to stop with the assuming thing." Dean would have to find a good stash of popcorn if Cas and Sam meeting ever came to pass.  
  
"You're really not doing too well so far, Leather Jacket," Castiel said to him like he had absolutely all of the time in the world to tell Dean in just how many ways he was screwing the pooch here as they spoke.  
  
"How much time do I have left?" Dean asked, and then snapped his fingers. "Wait, we could turn it into Wheel of Fortune. If you spin and it lands on the bankrupt, we got a date, what about that?"  
  
There was a pause before Cas replied, a bit more slowly than before.  
  
"What does that entail exactly?"  
  
"You said I wasn't doing well, so I figured I'd have a better chance of actually asking you out somewhere if luck was involved. Y'know, Wheel of Fortune? Spin it and ta-dah — you get what you land on." Dean wrinkled his nose as he looked at the sun, speaking casually. "And if I'm not doing well, sounds like a date would be you landing on bankrupt."  
  
A quiet laugh was the response Dean got, and he figured that was better than getting hung up on. Another point for him.  
  
"I'm giving you a chance, obviously it would be a little more than bankrupt." Dean had his mouth open to reply when Cas continued. "Maybe I'd have a dollar."  
  
"Just one dollar," Dean confirmed and could practically hear Cas nodding once on the other end.  
  
"Just one."  
  
"Not even a coupon or anything as a consolation prize?"  
  
"I wasn't aware Wheel of Fortune dealt out coupons along with prize money."  
  
"Damn," Dean cursed under his breath, amused more than insulted. "Could be worse, we could be playing Jeopardy instead. What is 'will you go on a date with me?'"  
  
It was a very long time before Cas said anything, only the faint sounds from the phone letting Dean know he hadn't been shot down completely. It was the slightest bit nerve-wracking, but that was to be expected. The seconds ticked on by and the silence and lack of answer grew less entertaining and more uncomfortable as the moment was dragged out. Dean was turning the corner when he finally heard an exhale, and his shoulders relaxed from the tense position he hadn't been aware he was keeping.  
  
"I reserve the right to punch you in the face at any time, but fine. Yes."  
  
If Dean was cheering, it was only silently, and he definitely did not punch the air in victory or anything as undignified as that.  
  
"I was already under the impression that you reserved that right," he said, grinning. "Time and place?"  
  
"You're making me pick? This isn't a good start, Dean."  
  
"So you've said." He huffed once thoughtfully. "Alright, I'm guessing fast food isn't your thing."  
  
"Hmm, judging me already. I'm sure not having second thoughts here."  
  
"Who said anything about judging? Maybe I just thought you'd wanna steer clear of McDonald's on the first date. Not that I'd be protesting, but to each their own —"  
  
"Just take me to your favorite place," Cas interrupted, and Dean's eyebrows raised. "It can be a conversation topic if things start to get awkward."  
  
Dean considered telling him that he sincerely doubted things would get awkward at all, what with the easy banter they had going, but kept silent and just agreed with a little "mhm".  
  
"Time, then. You free tonight or do I have to wait with bated breath?"  
  
"Tonight," Cas said immediately, and there was another beat before he went on. "Tonight is fine."  
  
Address given and time set, Dean assured him once just before hanging up that no, he would not be treating him to any fast food places, despite the appeal, and the way Cas rolled his eyes could have been considered an audible reaction before he said "goodbye, Dean" and the line went dead.  
  
Yeah, Dean would have said that a date counted as established contact.


	3. Chapter Three

Ignoring the flutter of butterflies in his stomach was more difficult than Castiel had anticipated. He didn't _do_ dating; he hadn't been on a date since college, and the ones he'd had that didn't end with him feeling ashamed and filled with self-loathing were few and far between. The memories of his disastrous behavior (or the frequently awful behavior of his suitors) were resurfacing with brutal clarity.

Too nervous to set his mind to one task, Castiel was pacing his apartment, moving things around, checking his phone too often, changing his outfit three times. The latter was important. He felt no need to impress Dean and wanted his clothes to reflect that nonchalance as much as possible. He wanted his shoes to say _I don't care_ , his pants to add _I'm not here to impress you_ , his shirt and blazer to conclude _but I can still dress nicely if I want to._

He couldn't help but resent Dean for having an effect on him. He had kept to himself for so long now, stuck to the few friends he had kept over the years, that meeting someone new, as strange as they might be, was exciting. Speaking of friends — a quick glance at his phone told him that no, Anna hadn't answered his last text. Out of things to do, he reread the gist of their conversation so far.

_So I might have a date tonight?_

_what???? castiel, you, cas, on a date?_

_Yes. i don't know what to do._

  _um. go?_

  _I'm not sure i want to anymore._

  _then ditch!_

  _...I gave him my address. Why did i give him my address???_

  _hahahaha, you'll be fine. have a good time!_

  _Would it be unacceptable if I brought you along?_

  _...yes cas wow. please. just go and enjoy yourself_

  _Ugh I want to bang my shins on the corner of my coffee table._

It was conclusive: he was an idiot. He was torn between wanting out and the excitement of seeing someone new, of doing something outside of his routine. The thought both thrilled and scared him. If anything he would enjoy making Dean realize how bad at all this he was. Though that could be argued, since he was about to go on a date with the man, wasn't he? Something, _somewhere_ had worked.

His wave of relief was followed by a quick spike in anxiety when he realized Dean would be here any minute. Castiel texted Anna one last time ("If you don't hear from me within the next 24 hours presume me dead. My murderer wears a leather jacket and is freckly"), and then made a last visit to his standing mirror. He hoped that what he was wearing was casual enough, would express his friendly disinterest. His faded dark blue jeans fell just right on his shoes, and he'd opted to wear a simple t-shirt under his blazer. He felt another flutter of butterflies at the thought that he was about to go on a date with another man, one that, despite his usual lack of interest, he couldn't deny was attractive. At least his pathetic attempts at flirting and his campy manner of speech toned the effects of his face on Castiel down a few notches.

Was he ever thankful for that.

Just as he was pulling on the hem of his blazer, straightening it out, a dull knock came from the door. Castiel hurried to it, patting his back pocket to make sure his wallet was safely tucked there. Wallet presence confirmed, he took a deep breath before opening the door.

He was greeted with Dean's blinking face, an expression which quickly brightened with the very same grin Castiel had been enthralled by the previous day.

"My bad, I was looking for the mean guy I met at the library, not his attractive look-alike," Dean said, causing Castiel's greeting to die in his throat.

"Wow, you've managed to both insult and compliment me in one sentence," Castiel muttered as he raised an eyebrow, and suddenly the nervous flip flopping of his stomach stopped. He could handle this. Dean was far from intimidating, and in fact was kind of amusing to just watch and listen to, so he was sure to get some form of enjoyment out of the evening. _I can deal with this_ , he told himself.

"Focus on the compliment, you're better off that way. Look at the glass half full, right?"

"Did you get that from _Cosmo_ , too?" Cas teased, smiling a bit, stepping outside and closing the door behind him. He had to brush close to Dean to do so, and he felt something akin to brief buzz of static sweep over his skin, making the air at his arm stand on end.

"Nope, all me," he said.

"Right, I'm sure you're filled with philosophical self-help advice," Castiel said as they began their walk down the hall and to his building's entrance.

"Yes I am, thank you for noticing."

Castiel held the door for Dean as they stepped outside, the air cool but not cold.

"So, where are you taking me?"

"I'm not gonna ruin the surprise," Dean said, and he waggled his eyebrows as he had the day before, causing Cas to roll his eyes. Dean was leading him to a row of parked cars along the street, and Cas tried to guess which one was his. He was not surprised when Dean stopped in front of a '67 Impala, grinning from ear to ear. Apparently a proper gentleman, if he could be called that, Dean opened the passenger door for Castiel.

"Figured you'd ride something flashy," Cas said as he sat inside the car, where he could smell mostly leather and dust. Cassette tapes were stacked between the two front seats, and a glance in the backseat showed him discarded paper bags from fast food restaurants. Dean could have cleaned that up before picking him up for the date.

"Yeah, she's a showstopper," Dean said as he took his place in the driver's seat. He was filled with pride, patting the dashboard of the car like one would a family pet. Cas didn't answer, frowning instead at the music that burst into life when Dean started the car. He wasn't surprised to hear the heavy riffs of classic rock, but the sound was loud in an attempt to mask the rumbling of the car's motor.

"We're not doing this," he grumbled and reached for the dials of the radio as Dean maneuvred out of the parking space. Just as he was about to turn the knob to another station, Dean's hand came to slap his away.

"Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole."

Dean's eyes left the road to slide over to Castiel, and he gave him a brief, close mouthed smile before he faced the road again.

"Nice, this isn't really —" he started, before being startled when Dean belted out the chorus of the song with no inhibition or embarrassment. His hands beat the rhythm on the wheel, forcing Cas to look out of the passenger window so Dean wouldn't see his smile. There was something charming about his lack of self-awareness, about the way Dean behaved like they'd known each other for a long time, rather than two strangers.

Once the tune was over, Castiel badgered Dean with questions about where they were going. He got no real answers, just a series of deflections, which served their purpose as he didn't notice when the car came to a stop in front of a small diner.

It looked cozy and clean, a  neon sign in the window advertised 24-hour service, and signs for local activities were pasted on the glass doors. It fit, somehow: charming, a little weird but welcoming. Like Dean.

"We're here!" Dean declared like he was yelling "surprise!" at a surprise birthday party. He didn't wait for Cas' response, shooting him one of those grins again before stepping out of the car. Castiel followed, rubbing his palms on his jeans.

"Not bad," he said to Dean.

Dean shrugged and shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. Castiel noted what Dean was wearing tonight, which happened to be exactly the same clothes he'd worn yesterday. Not knowing what to make of that, he tossed the thought away.

"You say that like you expected worse," Dean said, walking through the door and holding it open for Cas.

"I definitely expected worse."

"I told you it wouldn't be a fast food joint," he pointed out. Cas walked through the door being held for him, brushing close to Dean. For some reason he didn't mind their repeated, accidental proximity.

"There's tons of other things it could have been. Like an indie coffee shop. Or a seedy bar."

"Are you suggesting I subject myself to those kind of places?"

"Who said anything about suggesting?" He gave Dean a sly grin, before his eyes wandered around the comfortable looking booths that lined every windowed wall, took in the clean counter and it's stools, the nicely printed menus on the wall.

The way the place was built allowed the customers a peek into the kitchen, which was always a good sign. The smells wafting from there made his mouth water. Fresh pies decorated a display near the cash register, looking like they could have been straight out of a magazine. There were a few occupied booths, the music muted in the background as cheerful voices filled the place. When Castiel's attention returned to Dean, he was chatting with the waitress.

"You brought a friend!" the woman said, and Castiel took note of the name on the tag of her uniform: Andrea. She smiled bright and sunny, and he returned it with a polite duck of his head.

"Hello," he said, as Dean beamed at her. Castiel immediately steeled himself for what would come next, recognizing the glee on Dean's face as upcoming stupidity.

"Yeah, I picked him up just outside, he looked like he needed a fine meal from an upstanding establishment," Dean said and _god,_ that grin turned infuriating as Castiel narrowed his eyes and peered at him with thin lips.

"Excuse me?" he said at the same moment Andrea laughed, hitting Dean on the arm.

"You're an idiot, and you're going to scare away this gentleman," she said before smiling at Castiel again, apologetic. "He's always like this," she muttered as she shook her head.

"I am already filled with regret," he muttered, but he was smiling back, the atmosphere of the place too homey, the familiarity between Dean and Andrea too comforting for him not to. "I'm Castiel."

"Welcome to Benny's, Castiel," she said, smiling again.

"Thank you."

"We'll be taking the regular booth," Dean said, nodding to a booth far from the entrance, at the back of the diner. There was an old vintage poster from the 50's above it, advertising stockings for a pouty looking lady.

"Figured," she said, voice affection in and of itself. She brought them glasses of water once they were seated, giving them a last smile before she left them alone, returning to her counter. Dean was leaning on his forearms, his hands entwined at the fingers.

"So, what do you think?"

"It's alright," Castiel said, not wanting to give Dean the satisfaction of knowing he liked the place a lot and what it told him about Dean even more.

"It's better than alright, this place is fantastic," Dean said, mock-affronted. "Wait 'til you taste the food, the cook is killer," he added, pointing a finger in direction of the open area of the kitchen. Cas looked over his shoulder, seeing a man in a greasy apron busying himself at the grill. He was whistling a tune, flipping burgers and like he'd done this his entire life.

"I'll be the judge of that," Cas said, picking up his glass to drink, peering at Dean over the rim. He was going to play the quiet game, he decided as his eyes bored into Dean's. When put his glass down, his eyes were still locked. Normally this would have made anyone uncomfortable, made them look away, but Dean was looking right back with delight, like he was fully aware of the game Castiel had set in motion.

"I'm telling you, you won't want to eat fries anywhere else after this place," he said, smoothing his hands on the clean surface of the formica table. There was no sign of nervousness in any of his movements, everything fluid and assured, almost well-rehearsed. Castiel remained quiet.

The silence stretched and Dean cleared his throat.

"So, you come here often?"

"You made it approximately 2 minutes without showcasing your cheesiness. New record," Cas said, eyebrows raised.

"You're the one giving me the stony silence thing," Dean said, and he looked like he was pouting.

"Oh my god. Don't do that."

"Why? Is it working?" He grinned cheekily and Cas lifted the menu to his face, cutting Dean off. This was harder than he'd thought. Fingers hooked over the edge of his menu and tugged it down. Dean was leaning over, grinning wide, eyebrows raised.

"Try the steak. Man, their steak is _great_ here."

Cas jerked the menu away from Dean's fingers, sniffed, and then said as flatly as he possibly could:

"Then I'll have the Caesar salad."

Dean laughed, leaning back in his seat, drumming his fingers along the edge of the table. Cas noted that he'd done the same in the library, noted that it fit with his image of _charged_ he had of Dean. Like crackling electricity, like a rhythm building up to a clamorous drum beat, like something barely contained. It made him want to find out more, and that scared him, told him that was exactly why he should try and keep his distance.

"Feisty," Dean said under his breath, and Cas slammed the menu down and kicked him in the shin, hard. Dean had no reaction and before Castiel could really think about that, Andrea was making her way to them.

"Dean, you'll be pleased to know we've got a new kind of pie today, and it's on special," she said, smiling. Dean's eyes flew to the glass display, and he pushed himself out of the booth at lightning speed.

"I'll be back in a sec," he told Cas, and watching him stumble to the display was endearing.

"I take it he likes pie?" Cas asked Andrea, who laughed.

"If it was possible I think that's all he'd ever eat," she said, and then took Castiel's menu from the table. "So, what do you actually want to eat?"

Castiel looked up at her, wondering if she'd sent Dean away on purpose, if she thought he'd try to order for him.

"Just the special of the day, actually," he said, changing his mind about the salad at the last minute.

"Coming right up," she said, about to turn away. Dean had stopped by the counter and was calling something into the kitchen, eliciting laughs.

"Wait."

She stopped, smiled at him openly, inviting him to keep going.

"Does he..." He hesitated, looked at Dean leaning on his forearms on the counter, and noticed some of the other patrons were smiling at Dean, or outright laughing along. "Does he bring people here often?" he asked finally, returning his gaze to hers.

"No, actually," she said. "You're the first. You must be something special," she winked, and then turned away right as Dean walked up and slid back into his side of the booth.

"What were you two chatting about?"

"Nothing," Cas said too fast, taking his water and drinking a big gulp. "You didn't order."

"She knows what I want," Dean's eyes were focused on him, intent and green. Castiel didn't like it. It was like Dean was looking right at his soul and had him all figured out.  
  
"Right," Castiel said, and found he couldn't look away. He wanted to, but it felt like giving in. So their eyes remained locked, Dean's mouth curling up into a half-smile, half-smirk as he leaned his chin into the heel of his palm, elbow on the table. Cas crossed his legs at the ankles, tapped a finger along his glass of water, and kept his eyes trained on Dean. He could do this, a simple staring contest. The glint in Dean's eyes had to be his imagination; there was no way Dean was actually _reading_ him, or his very _soul_ like he felt he was. It was just part of the game, destabilizing your opponent, so Cas decided it was his turn. He could play dirty, and he did, slowly licking his lower lip, tilting his head just slightly, giving him his best bedroom eyes.  
  
Castiel was rewarded by the widening of Dean's eyes, a brief moment in which he looked caught off- guard, before he dropped his hand to the table and raised his eyebrows, as if saying _alright then, bring it on_.  
  
"What?" Castiel asked, as innocent as he could muster, trying to cover up the smirk threatening to spread across his lips. Andrea walked over with their plates before Dean could answer, interrupting their game.  
  
"Here you go, boys," she said with a smile, and Dean thanked her, shooting her a warm smile of his own. She refilled Castiel's glass of water, and then left them.  
  
"Get ready to experience food for the first time in your life," Dean said as he picked up a huge hamburger off his plate, juice dripping on his fingers. It did look amazing, like food from an advertisement, but the most amazing thing was the way Dean was looking at it, as if he hadn't eaten in weeks, like the burger in his hands was a work of art. He hummed around a mouthful of food, eyes closing with pleasure and Cas let out a soft laugh, because who ate like that?  
  
"You're ridiculous," he said as he picked at his plate and took a few bite of his own meal. He had to pause, because it _was_ delicious.  
  
"Told you," Dean said before grinning and taking another bite of his burger.  
  
They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Castiel put his fork down to drink a little. He had to slow down, he could feel his stomach filling up already.  
  
"Aren't you going to ask me what my hobbies are? Where I grew up, what kind of potato chips I like?" Cas said, eyebrows raised. He was both pleased and anxious about the lack of first date small talk. He couldn't figure out Dean's game; just when he thought he had him figured out, Dean veered off in the other direction.  
  
"Give a guy a break, can't you see I'm feasting?" Dean said, talking with his mouth full (nice) and wiping at his greasy lips with the back of his hand (hygienic).  
  
"Well, gee, let me leave you and your food alone then," Castiel said, eyebrow raising as Dean waved a hand to stop him from sitting up.  
  
"No, no, sit the hell down, we're gonna do this. 20 questions, first date version." He grinned, wide and bright again, and Cas simply watched him as he lifted a fry into his mouth and ate it slowly. He twirled his hand in a _go on_ gesture when Dean didn't start immediately, and watched Dean reach for the bottle of ketchup.  
  
"Let me just..." He was pouring some on the patty of his burger, unhealthy amounts, the tip of his tongue sticking out and one of his eyes closing as if in deep focus over the squirt of ketchup.  
  
Castiel cleared his throat, and only then did Dean stop, looking up at him with a briefly abashed look.  
  
"What? I like ketchup," he shrugged, before putting it down. "Right! 20 Q. Gonna start you easy with favorite color?"  
  
"Green." The word spilled from his lips before he could help it, and the sudden brightness in Dean's very green eyes made him feel self-conscious. "That's not a flirtation. I liked green before you showed up."  
  
"Uh huh. Sure you did."  
  
"Next question."  
  
"Democrat or republican?"  
  
"Never discuss politics on the first date."  
  
"So this is a date, huh?"  
  
"I take that back. This is an 'I'll tolerate you since you're buying me dinner' outing."  
  
Dean laughed then, and it felt good to be the cause of that sound, filling the diner, making a few head turns because it was so genuine.  
  
"Okay then, while you tolerate me, here's another question. What do you think of faith?"  
  
The question put him off, and he hesitated long enough for Dean to stop shoving food into his mouth.  
  
"Touchy subject?" he asked, and Cas shrugged, turned his glass slowly in his hand.  
  
"Not anymore," he said, picking at his food. Dean looked at him as if he was waiting for more, but he took a bite of his food instead.  
  
"Yeah, well, you're not the only one. Can't really blame you for that one," Dean said, huffing soft laughter under his breath. There was something forced about it, and he wondered if it had anything to do with Dean's own experience. Maybe he'd had faith once, too.  
  
"Sounds like you know a thing about that yourself," Castiel said, eyes fixed on Dean to watch his reaction closely. Maybe that could clue him in. But all he saw was a kind of strange glint, like Dean knew something Castiel didn't, like there was a grand secret Castiel wasn't in on.  
  
"I might," he said, giving Castiel a smile that was sad more than it was playful. Maybe that was something they had in common, though Castiel doubted that Dean had lived the childhood he had.  
  
"I was raised in a church. My father was a deacon, so I spent most of my time there. I was even home schooled there," Cas said, picking at his salad. He was looking down at his plate to avoid Dean's gaze, not wanting to see judgement in his eyes. He knew his parents had been unconventional in their belief, but they had been _good_ , and that was more than most people could say about themselves.  
  
"That must've been something," Dean said, and Cas smiled a bit.  
  
"My mother was a good teacher."  
  
"Obviously, since look at you now," Dean grinned, then winked before reaching to steal one of Castiel's fries. "Finished mine already," he pointed to his plate, where half of his burger was left, the entirety of his side salad, and the only thing left to show for his fries the salt lining the bottom of his plate.  
  
"I'm pretty sure picking into other people's plates is rude by all standards," Cas said, but he grinned at him, and for a moment they were just on the edge of something, of sharing a laugh.  
  
That was when everything fell apart.

Every light bulb in the diner blew out, plunging it into darkness, and the patrons yelped in surprise. Castiel himself startled, frowned, and looked over his shoulder, where the streetlights provided enough clarity for him to see the door open and figures slip inside before it shut quietly. He turned back to Dean with wide eyes only to see the other man was already up, tense, eyes searching the darkness.  
  
"Generator will pick that up in a sec!" Benny called from the kitchen, and the frantic voices seemed to calm at the sound of his low, soothing drawl.  
  
That did nothing to soothe Castiel, however, as the seconds ticked away in the weight of the dark, in the tangible tension he felt in Dean standing as if to shield him. He wondered if there was a gas leak or if he was having some kind of attack; his breathing had gone short and his head was spinning, the air rank with a thick smell that coated the back of his throat at every inhale.  
  
A car drove by and its headlights filled the room, traced arcs over the walls and briefly illuminated four silhouettes. When the car disappeared around the corner he heard movement and screams, and felt helpless at the sound of a pleading cry cut off short and the sound of a body hitting the floor. The bad feeling in his gut turned into nausea and fear, because he knew the smell that followed, the tangy iron and sharp sickening thickness of it.  
  
And yet he could think nothing but Benny's generator is taking its sweet time, absurd as that thought was, as more screams, cries, and unidentifiable footsteps echoed against the walls. There was another scream cut short, the sound of someone shoved and falling against a table before everything clattered to the floor. It was immediately followed by a third, closer this time, and he could hear low voices asking for someone, for something, and a part of him screamed it's me, they want me, but that was crazy - why would they?  
  
The next scream was familiar, and it was with a sinking feeling that Castiel recognized Andrea's voice pleading for her life.  
  
There was a bright flash of light and Castiel realized that he'd closed his eyes, squeezing them shut like a child hoping to wake up from a nightmare. He opened them to see Dean a few steps further now, his back to him, a strange light pouring from his every pore, a glow wrapped around his outline like he'd been drawn onto the fabric of reality. All the air vanished from Castiel's lungs as he watched. The glow became enough to light the face of the four silhouettes, the bodies lying bloody on the floor, and Andrea in a headlock with a knife at her throat. Castiel had no time to dwell over the shadowed wings spreading from Dean's back, bathe in the comfort the glow emanating from him provided, ponder the weird charge of static electricity that made his hairs stand on end.  
  
Something glinted in Dean's hand and he saw a strange blade there as Andrea screamed and the man holding her drove his knife into her stomach, and then Dean was only movement, blurred and hurried but practiced, trained as Benny yelled Andrea! and threw himself over the counter to pull her behind it to safety.  
  
Castiel was transfixed by the speed with which Dean threw off the men lunging at him, with his raw strength that sent them flying into tables and chairs. He found himself frozen into place as Dean stabbed a man in the chest with his blade and light flickered from inside the victim before he slumped to the ground.  
  
All the gloom, the confusion, the fear, and the speed of everything happening at once created a jumble that jolted Castiel to his core; he didn’t understand what he was seeing. He was cowering on the bench he'd been seated at, his fingers digging hard into the cheap faux leather hard enough to turn the tips white. He felt the splatter of something on his face — oh god, what if it was blood - curling himself up to make himself as small as possible. He could usually hold his own in a fight, but this seemed beyond him, the shock of that light and of all of these people dying in front of his eyes more than he'd ever had to bear.  
  
A sudden silence settled in the room as the screams died out. The reek of sulfur felt pungent in his nose. The other customers had fled or were gathered by the entrance, crying and wailing and trying to call for help. Dean was standing with the blade in his hand and the light from within him seemed to dull until it was gone. He turned to Cas, and as their eyes locked, something twisted in his stomach. He held Dean’s gaze, trying to find something in there, hopefully an explanation for what he'd just seen. There was blood on Dean's hands, dripping off his sword and onto the floor, and then Castiel couldn't take it anymore.  
  
He turned away to disappear but a hand grabbed him at the elbow, pulling him before he could make his escape. His heart was hammering in his chest, and he could taste the sharp bitterness of bile in his throat. He jerked away from the touch, whipping around to face Dean.  
  
"Don't touch me," he said through gritted teeth, rubbing at his elbow where Dean's hand had been. The last thing he wanted right now was this madman anywhere near him.  
  
"Wait a minute, Cas —"  
  
"For what?" Cas snapped, taking a step back. "To hear this isn't what it looks like? That you can explain? Because it looks pretty clear to me!" He was nearly shouting, voice trembling with fear he wished he could control. Hard to do, when you've just been on a date with a psychopath, when you'd actually been warming up to him.  
  
In the silence between them after, the only sound was Castiel's heavy, frantic breathing; adrenaline pumped through his veins, making him feel lightheaded and dizzy.  
  
"There are things out there," Dean started, his fists clenched at his sides. "You wouldn't even believe — you have no idea, Cas, the kind of shit that goes on behind the scenes."  
  
"What the hell are you talking about?"  
  
"Look, no matter what I tell you at this point it's not gonna matter. You've seen what you've seen, you're freaked out and you've probably already made up your mind to never see me again. But you gotta believe me, man," and here his face softened, his eyes wide and pleading. It it was so vulnerable and honest that Castiel almost missed his following words:  "I'm here to protect you."  
  
Castiel was jolted by anger, his mind glad to find something to latch onto. That was a real emotion that wasn't confusion and terror and just plain adrenaline in his veins.  
  
"Protect me? Who the fuck are you to appoint yourself as some kind of fucked up guardian angel? I don't need your protection, I don't need shit from a stranger!"  
  
He was full of all and only anger now, pounding through his veins, flushing his face, twisting his fingers until his arms hurt from how tightly he was clenching his fists. He’d  come to trusting this freak.  
  
"What's wrong with angels?" Dean asked, and the question was so inappropriate at the moment that it threw Castiel off-guard and he stammered for an answer.  
  
"What? I don't know, they're not even real!" He shook his head, taking a step away from Dean. "You know what, never mind. You can't even behave like an adult," he said, full of now there was bitterness and disappointment; in a way, he'd liked Dean, but all of that had crumbled down. He turned, but before he could even take a step Dean's voice rose again and stopped him.  
  
"Actually, I'm an angel, you ass."  
  
The words had the effect of a slap. Castiel reeled, but only for a moment before he took quick steps towards Dean, clenched his fist and barely held back his punch.  
  
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" he demanded instead, because fuck if jokes were the last thing on his mind right now; there were dead bodies not ten feet away, and he’d seen what Dean had done. He knew, now, that Dean was -- trained to kill, if anything. Ruthless, heartless, and even though he'd saved Cas and the others in the diner, Castiel would never manage to erase the imprint of Dean stabbing a man right in the heart from his eyelids.  
  
He'd witnessed enough horror in his life. He wasn't about to allow more of it in, and something told him letting Dean in meant more of them, too, dark and terrifying and reeking.  
  
Dean didn't flinch, he only looked at Cas with a clenched jaw and his brow furrowed.  
  
"Nothing is wrong with me, I'm telling you the truth," he said. The asshole wouldn't look away, he didn't even blink, and Cas was so rattled again by how piercing his gaze was. "I'm an angel, and those? Back in there? Those were demons."  
  
"Stop that, I've seen enough!" And he had, he'd seen enough to know Dean was crazy -- not the kind of crazy that was immediately apparent but the scarier kind, the kind that hid and masqueraded as normal, the kind that made sense to itself, that reasoned and rationalized irrational things.  
  
The kind he didn't want to come close to.  
  
Dean spoke just as Castiel did, and their voices blended, both of them talking over the other, not hearing the words intended.  
  
"— Cas, I just —"  
  
"— No, Dean —"  
  
"— We need you, Heaven needs you, we're —"  
  
"— Shut up, I don't want to hear it, you're —"  
  
"— In the middle of something bigger than us, something's gonna happen, you —"  
  
"— Crazy, and if you ever get near me again I'm calling the cops —"  
  
"— We need your help, don't you understand —"  
  
"I don't care! I don't care, I don't want to be part of this!" Cas yelled finally, putting a stop to Dean's words. The look of pain that crossed Dean’s face hurt Cas, somehow, a part of him immediately regretting not at least hearing him out. But all of it was so crazy, and the reek of blood still lingered in his nose and the back of his throat; he saw throats sliced open, blood everywhere, and he couldn’t unhear screams cut short. and screams cut off short.  
  
And that was it. Castiel was done. He wanted no part in this, wanted his life to stay as it was, calm and a little lonely and bland. After tonight, he was fine with that, he didn't want any of this crazy crap Dean was spewing at him, and he was definitely not the man Dean thought he was. Heaven needs you. What did that even mean?  
  
Castiel didn't look back, even though his hands shook when he reached for the emergency exit door. He pushed it open, ignoring the blare of the alarm as he slipped out. The smell of garbage in the alley was almost pleasant compared to the inside of the diner. He jogged to the mouth of it, glanced around the corner to make sure the street was deserted, and when something moved behind him in the gloom he ran away from it as fast as he could, feet slapping at the pavement, beating the rhythm of his heart racing and his pulse sounding like it was about to explode in his ears.  
  
Whoever Dean was, whatever Dean was, he wanted nothing to do with it.

 

* * *

  
He ran most of the way back, glad that Dean hadn't taken him too far from his apartment. Still, it was almost two hours later that he reached his door, sweating and panting and feeling absolutely disgusting in more ways than one. It felt like there was a stone in his stomach, heavy and pulling him down. His thoughts buzzed around in his head, confusing; he'd been on a date with some weird psychopathic killer with glowing skin, or an angel, or whatever the hell, and his fingerprints still had to be all over the crime scene.  
  
He stumbled inside his apartment, slamming the door shut behind him and locking it with much more force than necessary. He was a mess, understandably; there were sweat stains at his armpits, spreading on his shirt, which he peeled it off right in front of the door as he took a few weak steps into his living room. He needed to feel something, something he couldn't put his finger on, just something other than this panic that was making him tremble all over.  
  
And yes, it was helplessness, fear, but fuck, most of it was still awe at Dean, that thrill that crept down his spine.  
  
He wanted tea, wanted a shower, wanted to curl up in bed, wanted his mother and father (who are dead), wanted to text Anna (but couldn't find his phone). He wanted, needed, something. But it was dark in his apartment and after hitting his knee on the coffee table he rushed to the light switch, flicking it on.  
  
His heart stopped. There was a man standing in the corner, smiling the eeriest of smiles at him, and the man said, spreading his hands slowly:  
  
"Welcome home, Castiel, prophet of the lord," right before Castiel felt something hit the back of his head and he fell to the floor and into unconsciousness.


	4. Chapter Four

It was only after the door to the emergency exit closed that Dean turned away from it, alarm loud and insistent in his ears. Contact made and contact lost. Dean was equal parts frustrated and concerned, but he had work to do where he was and Castiel could wait, as much as it pained him; the demons had been dispatched and now he had a mess to clean up.  
  
A bloody mess, at that.  
  
He wasted no time hurrying to Andrea's side, and in the time that it had taken Dean to fail at convincing Castiel of his intentions, Benny had gotten Andrea behind the counter and all of the (living) patrons had escaped out of the diner. Benny sat with her, hand pressed over the blood that stained her shirt. Distant sirens rang through the air, muffled from inside the walls of the building, and Dean kneeled beside Andrea, gaze finally flicking up to Benny when he saw the man's arms tighten around her. There was no way they hadn't heard the argument between he and Cas, and there was no way for Dean to take the time to explain anything entirely at the moment.  
  
"I'm saving her," Dean said, voice close to pleading. It was getting pathetic, how much he was begging tonight, but he wasn't about to eat his words. His hand hovered over Benny's until the other relented and pulled his away.  
  
Benny stayed silent, but when he looked up at Dean, distraught, Dean's heart panged for him.  
  
Dean lowered his hand, touching his fingers to the stab. The result was immediate; Andrea's wet, strained breaths evened out and she stared at Dean with an awe-filled fear. Benny's sharp sound drew Dean's gaze to him and neither human, though the stress rolled off of them in waves, tried to flee.  
  
On the contrary, Benny spoke to him.  
  
"I'm thinking you have some explaining to do," Benny said.  
  
"I'll be back," Dean promised, and disappeared just as the lights from the police cars came through the windows.

 

* * *

  
  
It wasn't until everyone else had gone, law enforcement and patrons alike, that Dean made his way back into the diner, not bothering to walk through the front door. Sitting at his usual place at the counter and tapping his fingers on the surface, he watched his hands. Benny came in the back; Dean raised his eyes to watch him, inhaling to steel himself.  
  
"I'm guessing insurance doesn't cover demon attacks," Dean said. Benny hung his keyring up and sighed, rubbing a hand over his face before eventually standing in front of Dean. The counter felt like miles of space with how he crossed his arms, and Dean looked down again.  
  
"You guess right," Benny said.  
  
"I can help."  
  
"I'd sure hope so."  
  
Dean stiffened, pressing his lips together.  
  
"Is Andrea alright?" he asked to lead into the rest of the conversation.  
  
"She's not dead," came the reply, relief evident. "You saved her. And the police are convinced it was some kind of gang violence, which is just about all the bullshit I could take for the night." Benny's mouth turned down. "Not counting the _reality_ of it."  
  
"I tried to keep it away from you."  
  
"Yeah, well..." Benny exhaled heavily. "You didn't. So that explanation's a long time coming, sounds like."  
  
Dean had to admit he was right, even if he wrestled with letting more be known. The more someone knew, the more danger they were potentially in, and technically Benny was still just a bystander. Needlessly involved. He didn't have to know anything, Dean could leave and yeah, it would end up being a dick move, but he could.  
  
But Dean owed Benny far too much for him to walk out on him now.  
  
Dean first told him that he was an angel, and Benny nodded, accepted it without saying a word. He told Benny that he'd been on the Earth "kind of a long time", to which Benny said, "go on", and Dean spent five minutes on a tangent about history books. He moved onto demons next. Benny just looked at him expectantly, and Dean figured he didn't have to go through that if he really had heard everything that he had said to Cas earlier.  
  
"Angels and demons, then," Benny muttered.  
  
"Angels and demons," Dean said. "And we don't get along."  
  
"I never would've noticed," Benny said drily. "And something big is happening between the two of you?"  
  
"Pretty damn big," Dean hedged, shifting in his seat as his gaze darted away again. He could tell Benny the truth, but he wasn't about to drag him into a war. It was a cruel and unusual punishment to do something as drastic as that.  
  
"And you're leaving off there?"  
  
Dean paused before he finally gave a reluctant nod. Benny's face softened into frustrated concern. Dean waited for him to say something, to protest and demand more answers, but instead Benny just closed his eyes and let out a soft breath.  
  
"Alright, Dean," Benny said, opening his eyes again to fix his stare on Dean. Fuck, Dean was going to have to pull some strings and make sure reapers brought this man's soul straight to Heaven on the VIP ride when it was his time, he deserved so much fucking better than the crap hand he'd been dealt by Dean's mistake.  
  
Dean opened his mouth to reply, to say thanks, to say anything, but his phone rang and cut him off. Benny was turned away, taking off his hat to run a hand through his hair, so Dean checked the caller ID and answered.  
  
"We have a problem," Sam said quickly from the other end of the line.

 

* * *

 

 

Waking up was a slow process.  
  
It could have had something to do with Castiel's surroundings — the air was damp, heavy with a wet darkness that clung to each pore like it wanted to crawl underneath his skin. His breathing was restricted, and with every rise and fall of his chest, Castiel had to struggle to keep the tremor out of it. Seeing anything in the room (if it could have even been called that; it was barely more than a shed, really) was hard enough on its own without his pounding headache, the worst of it coming from exactly where he’d been hit on the head. It hurt, and as soon as the thought registered clearly to him, Castiel began to remember what had happened before he'd been knocked out.  
  
Panic set in from the inside out; he was petrified, first, immobile due to fear of whatever invisible threat could be there in the room. When Castiel turned his head reflexively in an attempt to look around and find anyone, all he achieved for his effort was a weak sound of pain that hitched in his too-dry throat. For all that he strained to raise his head, it simply would not go, and he touched his forehead to try and recognize why.  
  
Or, rather, he would have touched his forehead, would it have been possible for him to move his hand there. His wrists, his ankles — all had a heaviness around them, keeping him from being able to get up, nevertheless undo them. Struggling in the bonds made the fact that he wasn't getting out of the restraints by himself even more apparent; the rattle of the metal keeping the leather cuffs together echoed, mocking his alarm, into the inky black that enveloped Castiel. On his second endeavor to search the room, the edge of the leather that encircled his head pressed into his skin and made it a useless attempt.  
  
His labored breathing was the only thing he could hear once he'd stopped trying to get free, and the quick breaths only made the hysteria worse. Castiel closed his eyes, squeezing them tight to get the headache out from behind his eyelids, unclenching and clenching his fists in the hopes that if he relaxed his wrists enough he'd be able to pull them out.  
  
No such luck met him, and the minutes ticked by with Castiel awaiting his fate.  
  
Light flooded the room far too abruptly and the whiplash from black to white had Castiel's vision spotting out; tears stung at the edges of his eyes with the strain. All that he could see for a terrifyingly blank moment was brightness, fading away at the corners of his sight at a molasses pace, and Castiel's entire body tensed preemptively for the pain.  
  
He counted the seconds.  
  
One second and he wondered if maybe he was dead; they always said not to go towards the light.  
  
Two and he started to think about who exactly _they_ was.  
  
Three passed and the white, searing light was going away, so Castiel wasn't dead, and he wasn't sure if he should have been glad for that or not.  
  
Four seconds down and he could almost see again.  
  
Five —  
  
"Wake up, little Susie."  
  
The cheerful voice didn't match the ominous face that loomed over him, and Castiel pushed himself back away as much as he could, the persistent odor of sulfur invading his nose. The metal chilled his skin underneath his clothing, but the way the man's lips turned up at the corners so drastically made him feel like something small about to be stepped on. The smile didn't reach his eyes, not at all, and it was far from genuine, manufactured and hostile, a demeanor painted on with no real meaning in it.  
  
"Wake up," the man continued to sing happily as he turned away from Castiel and high-stepped as if in a marching band out of Castiel's line of sight. Humming replaced the lyrics and Castiel licked his dry lips, hoping to make his throat work.  
  
"I think I've seen this movie," Castiel said, but it came out as a raspy whisper and he swallowed, trying to quell the hasty pulse of his heart.  
  
"We've both been sound asleep," came the crooning off-pitch reply, and footsteps announced his return to Castiel's side. Icy cold fingers danced down Castiel's arm in time with the song, growled notes reverberating around the empty, too-bright room. " _Wake up_ , little Susie, and weep. The movie's over, it's four o'clock, and we're in trouble deep!"  
  
Castiel was having more trouble than he'd like forming words. It was understandable, considering he was terrified, caught and trapped underneath lights and restraints. The man wiggled his hips slightly and that was all Castiel could see of him before he disappeared again. Castiel could hear him fine, though, though the noises made no sense - the squeak of rusted wheels following  the soft pats of his shoes, while he sang at the top of his lungs,sending bursts of hurt through Castiel's head.  
  
"Wake up, little Susie! Wake up, little Susie!"  
  
He came to a stop, a rolling cart beside him as he peered down at Castiel again, this time humming in consideration.  
  
"Hmm, _hmmm_ , you seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place," he said simply, and Castiel coughed. The man perked up at that, beaming and raising his brows high, high, high. "Better open up that throat and look at what's the problem, shouldn't we?"  
  
Castiel's eyes widened and the panic rocketed up, drawing a laugh from the man who held a scalpel — of all things he could have possibly chosen, this one struck Castiel as the most cliché, and somewhere deep in his chest it caused a kind of hysterical amusement — in his hand, dragging the blunt edge up Castiel's shirt. Castiel started to protest, to choke out something desperate, but a fist connected with his mouth and a towel was shoved in as soon as he gasped and the man smiled again, wider and wider still.  
  
"Shhh, shh, sh-shhh. No, no, can't have any of that. Quiet down. You'll have plenty of time later to speak," he told Castiel, whose new split lip stung deep. The cloth pressing his tongue back tasted too clean, fibers sticking to the inside of his cheeks and drying out his mouth even further than it had been. Castiel's jaw twinged at the awkward angle and the man sighed, fixing it so that Castiel couldn't open his mouth any wider.  
  
"You'll need that, boy, don't spit out the one teensy little thing keeping your tongue whole."  
  
Castiel strained to look while the man was taking care not to touch his skin directly, brushing his fingers here and there, scalpel nowhere to be seen. He picked up a razor, skillfully cutting a hole into Castiel's shirt from collarbone to stomach; the nip of the blade barely grazing Castiel's chest drew a strangled noise of fear from him and more struggling. A finger appeared in the air between his eyes and Castiel's brows furrowed, focusing on the tip of the finger as the man hushed him for the second time.  
  
"Quiet, what did I say? Be good and stay still and it maaay not smart _as_ much," he cooed, and the razor found  
its path tracing lightly into Castiel's torso. Castiel responded with a groan and the blade dug deeper, cutting off the noise. Warmth rose to the surface of his skin and Castiel's body tensed of its own accord, a defense mechanism, while the cut, however shallow, brought red up to the surface with it. Castiel's gaze sought out the man's, his peripheral vision taking frantic note of the blade held loosely in long, threatening fingers. The grisly face shifted into an expression of faux comfort, one of his hands coming to rest in the sparse blotting of blood over Castiel's skin. "Oh, _come on,_ don't look at me like that! You could hurt my feelings, almost as much as you hurt that pretty angel's."  
  
Castiel stared at him, silent, and the sour taste of regret made his mouth all the more unpleasant. The man blew out a heavy breath like he had just realized something, waving the blood-tinged razor carelessly in the air as he spoke, matter-of-fact and stilted.  
  
"That's right, I haven't even taken the chance to introduce myself, how terribly rude of me." The razor flicked red onto Castiel's cheek and he flinched, trying to pull away from the hand that reached out and wiped the blood away. "Can't have you getting messy yet. We're not even at the fun part. Ah, Alastair, by the way."  
  
The blade found the previous cut again and tears sprang to Castiel's eyes as his throat worked to make a sound, any kind of sound that might stop the razor from digging any deeper. The feeling of skin spreading from the slice was a pain that demanded to be acknowledged, aching and hot. Fear was being overridden by pain, sharp.  
  
Alastair tutted, moving closer to Castiel's face to take the towel from his mouth and cut a piece of cloth from it, eyes on Castiel, as if enjoying watching him struggle to heave air into his lungs, jaw hanging slack. He couldn't breathe probably and his mouth and throat were dry almost enough to be painful. Alastair patted his cheek, leaving a red imprint of blood behind. The smell filled Castiel's nose and bile rose to the back of his throat.  
  
"Something to say?" Alastair asked, Castiel striving to swallow.  
  
There was little coherency going through his head, most of his thoughts consisting of panicked overtures hinting at connecting the dots he hardly understood. Demons and angels and prophets, oh my — and Castiel was in the thick of it, if these people thought that he was a prophet, of all things. He was Castiel, and only Castiel. Angels weren't real; demons weren't real; none of anything that was happening had any grasp in the real world, where he belonged. Not in his nightmares suddenly come to life, but _the real world_ , where he wasn't abducted and placed on a cutting board.  
  
Where he'd hopefully go back to, if he lived through this.  
  
It had all started with Dean, Dean with the leather jacket, Dean with the bright eyes and silver tongue, Dean the liar and player and manipulator. Castiel hated that he'd fallen for him so damn easily. He'd been charmed into thinking that Dean was maybe even been normal, despite the strange introduction. Everyone involved with the man was obviously crazy of some kind, and Castiel thought back to what he'd seen in the diner there with Dean, the weapon in his hand coated with blood.  
  
Castiel thought about what he'd said and how much truth might actually be in it.  
  
"You're a demon," Castiel said with a voice like sandpaper.  
  
Alastair's immediate smile was electric in a glacial way, sending cold through Castiel's bones.  
  
"Mm, yes, well done, what gave it away?" Alastair bundled the towel into his hands and set it on top of where he'd sliced into Castiel, letting the sparse red soak up into the fibers. The pain had been worse than the bleeding, and Castiel sought to make his muscles relax. "The penchant for little sharp things or my knowledge of who you happen to be?"  
  
"And just who am I?"  
  
Castiel's question was met with a critical stare from Alastair, his fingers slowly tracing lines down Castiel's arm. When the sensation made him shiver, Alastair barked out a laugh that sounded like gravel and retracted his touch, snagging the towel again and pulling Castiel's jaw open himself to push the blood-wet cloth back in. Castiel cried out, protested, but struggling was useless and Alastair ignored him.  
  
Before Castiel could begin to register the taste of his own blood in his mouth, Alastair had stabbed a knife through the back of his hand.  
  
The knife — not the razor, Alastair must have picked up one of the other tools from the table while Castiel was struggling — was still there when Alastair let it go and turned around, humming contentedly once again, and Castiel stared at the blade in a dull sense of stunned disbelief before the pain registered, a burning that shocked and radiated up his arm. A muffled scream escaped from the towel keeping his mouth pried open, and his panicked gaze sought out Alastair. He kept trying to make a noise other than some sorry attempt at a shout with his too-dry throat or a choked, dry sob.  
  
His head pounded. His hand had just been stabbed through completely. He could feel a sharp pain down to the crease of his elbow, the tip of his fingers. The cut marking up his torso stung.  
  
And Alastair _sang_.  
  
"What are we gonna tell your mama?" he purred, pulling the knife out. A new wave of pain shot up Castiel's arm like electricity and he bit down on the cloth inside his mouth, blood seeping on his tongue. Alastair was gazing at the wound as he walked around to the other side of Cas. "What are we gonna tell your pa?" There was a pause as the knife came down again, in the other hand, an identical wound to the previous, and Castiel couldn't fight the tears pricking at the edges of his eyes that came with the pain.  
  
Alastair stopped singing abruptly, brows raised far up on his forehead as a frown appeared.  
  
"Oh, that's right," he said, lips in a pout. "They're — ah — _dead_. And by some freak accident, right? It's a reward of its own to see humans come up with their pitiful explanations for the things they choose not to see, hmm?"  
  
When Castiel didn't respond, Alastair went on, sliding the knife out of Castiel's hand. Blood dripped onto the floor in a rhythm, slower than his pulse, and he tried desperately to focus on the noise rather than everything else around him.  
  
"That was a wonderful plot point, by the by, to have your parents, erm." Alastair put a finger to his neck and made a slicing motion complete with a flick of the knife in Castiel's direction, causing his hands to ache with extra vigor. "Exterminated? Taken right out of the equation."  
  
Blood dripped. Castiel stared, pain fading into the background in the brunt of this revelation.  
  
"And to think that you had no idea," Alastair said with a false sympathy, inhaling sharply like it was a surprise that Castiel had no idea. The small pools of blood on the ground grew, with liquid having reached the edge to spill over. Castiel groaned and Alastair clicked his tongue, shaking his head. "Mm, yes, they're dead with a capital d, moved on to greener pastures a long, long time ago, but surely you remember that."  
  
Castiel was hardly listening to Alastair, the words a lethargic buzz in the back of his head as his gaze slid from the man with the knife to the ceiling above, all damp, rotted wood; he took in the walls, every window boarded up with wooden planks. Still looking around, however blearily, his attention was captured by a symbol drawn crudely on one of the boards. When he looked to the other windows, there, too, was a similar marking, if not the exact same one.  
  
His jaw ached, throat dry and hands hurting terribly, and due to the pain everything was so out of focus he could barely concentrate. He was almost mad at himself for noticing something like Satanist symbols painted on the walls when he'd just had a damn revelation.  
  
Demons killed his family. Or, at least, people that called themselves demons. He couldn't wrap his mind around it, not with pain buzzing along his every nerve ending. Besides, if Alastair was a demon, a real one, wouldn't he try to set him off like this?  
  
Then again, it couldn't be hard to track down papers to find record of the nature of Castiel's parents' deaths. So maybe everyone he'd met lately had just been a Satanist. Kidnappings, murder, and torture, all of that was something that belonged in a Stephen King novel, not in Castiel's otherwise bland and peaceful life.  
  
Except it was here, too real.  
  
His eyes burned with tears he couldn't shed, and he blinked frantically in succession, a broken plea managing to come out of his wrecked vocal cords. Alastair wiped the bloodied knife on the towel still stuffed in Castiel's mouth before he pulled the cloth away, allowing him to speak, and Castiel licked at his lips, mouth too dry to make much of a difference.  
  
"Where is the tablet?" Alastair asked before Castiel could have the chance to cough out anything of worth, and his mind blanked.  
  
"Tablet —?"  
  
Alastair held the knife over Castiel's fingers, let the edge crawl closer to his stained red skin as he whispered, horror-soft, "Pray tell, boy, or you might not get full use of your hands back, and that would be a shame."  
  
Castiel's head was pounding, a pain that felt like needles in his skull, and if he got out of this he didn't think that he'd be very inclined to complain about something as insignificant and easy to handle as a paper-cut ever again.  
  
And still even with this knife hanging dangerously near, Castiel said nothing.  
  
He jumped and shut his eyes on reflex when there was a sharp sound of knife piercing not flesh, but wood, and when Castiel squinted to look at what Alastair had done, thinking maybe, maybe he'd finally gone numb enough not to feel the slice, he saw the blade embedded in the table, Alastair folding his hands underneath his chin primly. Like he had all the time in the world. Like Castiel was the most interesting subject he had ever had the joy of playing with, cutting open.  
  
"The tablet, the one that everyone wants to get their greedy little fingers on, you _know_ ," Alastair said, easy and smooth. "You must know because now you know we know that you have it! Keeping company with angels, tsk-tsk, dangerous business. What did your parents tell you about talking to strangers?"  
  
He didn't know anything about any tablet that angels or cultists or sadists would want, and he would have said as much if there wasn't such a thick _something_ clogging his voice. Castiel found out that he still hadn't gone numb when Alastair didn't miss a beat as he pulled the knife out of the wood and put it through Castiel's index finger.  
  
"See, you make me hurt you." Alastair sighed while Castiel heaved up nothing but air. "If you would just spill the secret I wouldn't have to spill your blood, it's elementary."  
  
"I don't know, I don't know," Castiel choked, finally finding the words that slipped from his lips like they were too heavy and too light at the same time. His vision blurred when he looked at the new blood that gathered at the edge of the knife.  
  
Alastair slowly, _slowly_ , put the blade on the cart next to all the other tools Castiel couldn't quite see, once again wiping red smears off of his hands as the metal settled on the tray with a clatter.  
  
"You don't know," he said, like it was an option that hadn't yet been considered, and Castiel breathed, "no."  
  
Something in Alastair's face changed ever so slightly, half-hooded eyes swirling with a murky white that brightened into a pure lack of anything at all, and Castiel's inhale got caught somewhere between his throat and lungs on the way down.  
  
"Then the angel must have taken a special interest in you, hmm?" Alastair murmured, blinking once, and just as quickly as his gaze had shifted, his eyes were back to that cloudy blue. Castiel wondered if the pain had made him see things, and with his pulse beating in his absent fingertip, he tried to say as much.  
  
"Dean's not an angel," came out instead, and he stared while Alastair lightly ran his finger down Castiel's cheek, leaving behind traces of blood and a feeling of wrongness.  
  
"Yes, and _I'm_ not the grand inquisitor of Hell," Alastair said.  
  
Suddenly, the glass in the windows shattered as if they had all been punched through at the same time, and there was a sound like wind and wings that made Castiel flinch and close his eyes tight. Instinctively he tried to curl up, protect himself as best as he could, but the straps keeping him down protested and he gasped, clenched his teeth and struggled stubbornly in the restraints. No knife came down to keep him still, no towel was pushed back into his mouth — Castiel tried, he pulled, he pushed and hissed and toiled, but no matter which way he tried to move, the leather dug into his skin and his hands smeared and scrabbled for purchase in the blood that gathered underneath his palms.  
  
Metal tapped against metal below the table between his heaving breaths and it was only when he stopped that the silence registered.  
  
Glass fell and broke into pieces on the ground.  
  
His heartbeat was too loud.  
  
Castiel opened his eyes, searching for the damn - everything that he felt should have been happening in the room, but all that greeted him was the same surroundings as before, a different sort of calm taking over. He coughed, ran his tongue over his lip again and tasted copper. Alastair was gone now, and though he knew he should keep his guard up, his pulse fluttered to a softer cadence.  
  
"You look like shit," a voice that was very much not Alastair's said, and Castiel looked up - at Dean, standing next to the table in Alastair's former place with his hands tucked into his pockets, as if he'd just waltzed into the room devil-may-care style.  
  
Castiel opened his mouth to tell Dean to get him to a damn hospital, _thanks fucking much_ , not bothering to question the innate trust that he still held in Dean. Dean cut him off  and touched two fingers to his forehead. It was a wave of light and warmth, warm and pleasant and so good after the events that had just taken place,, and when Castiel gulped in a breath he found that he wasn't in any pain.  
  
A quick inventory revealed that he had no more marks on him at all, even his finger was whole again; all Castiel could do in response was raise his gaze to Dean’s and watch the other man track his movements. Dean released first his hands and without touching the restraints at Castiel's ankles, they popped open. Dean's hand found his shoulder after and Castiel exhaled.  
  
"Don't go anywhere," Dean said, and the firm authority in his tone had Castiel wondering. Even with the stern set of his jaw, there was concern in the way that Dean allowed his hand to linger on Castiel's shoulder, only dropping it as he set off towards the door of the shed — _blown open, since when?_ — with determined strides.  
  
"I'm not staying here," Castiel said, sliding off of the table gingerly, glancing back once and cringing at all of the red that covered it. He stood, and after realizing that he was trembling, he crossed his arms and pointedly didn't check the tray of equipment Alastair had wheeled in.  
  
Dean stopped and turned towards him as if to tell him just why he wasn't going to be following after, but a woman appeared next to him and leaned her shoulder against the doorway, shotgun in her hand and smile on her face.  
  
"No, you're not," she said. Castiel stumbled back a step, narrowly avoiding a collision with the table as he forced his gaze to settle on Dean, as if waiting for him to relay whether this woman was friend or foe. Dean just sighed and ran a hand through his hair, fist clenching and unclenching at his side in an obvious need to _move_.  
  
"Cas, Meg. Meg, Cas. She's here to help," Dean explained, and continued walking backwards out of the door. "Don't take him anywhere, Meg, or so help me..."  
  
"I won't take him anywhere." Meg waved a hand in the air, shouldered her shotgun as she took a few steps further into the room to give Castiel a wink. "He's going to sit in my car, and I'm going to sit in my car, and he's going to tell me where his house is. And we'll be two people in a car that just so happens to be going somewhere."  
  
Dean opened his mouth and shut it again with a pop, holding Meg's stare for a few extra seconds before he relented with a "yeah, okay." When Dean's eyes fell on Castiel, a slight furrow to his brow, Castiel felt as if he should say something, something like _thank you for saving my life_. Going home sounded like a good idea to him, and instead of saying anything at all, Castiel nodded at Dean to give him the go ahead.  
  
Dean walked out of the door, a blade so unlike the ones Alastair had used on Castiel gripped tight in his hand, and Castiel only shifted his dumbfounded attention away when Meg started to speak."Well," she started, bumping Castiel's hip with her own as she brushed past, "let's get you home safe and sound, hm? Doesn't hurt to have an angel and a prophet both indebted to me."


	5. Chapter Five

Meg was a hunter. As she drove him home, Castiel learned that every nightmare humanity had ever thought was fiction was in actuality real. He learned there were people fighting against these creatures and monsters, and Meg was one of them; these hunters hunted them, tracked them, and kept it all under wraps. He would have been fascinated to learn this any other day, but that night he could barely register what he was being told.  
  
His mood was worsened by the weird echoes of pain he felt, like ghost sensations spreading through his nerves. His brain knew he should have been in pain, had been sending the signals  before, but now there was nothing wrong, and it was creating a weird, off-putting feeling in his palm. He couldn’t stop making nervous, fidgety motions, his fingers constantly rubbing his palms.  
  
Despite his nerves, he had little energy, and when they reached his neighborhood he watched the buildings out of the passenger seat window with a strange distance, as if they were pictures of places rather than real ones. They drove past one of the shelters he volunteered at and he felt a pang as if he hadn't been there in years. He closed his eyes so he wouldn't see.  
  
The car reached a stop and Cas sat up, eyes peering up at his building. _Home_. Finally. Giving his number to a stranger had turned out to be the worst night of his life, and he couldn't wait to find his bed again.  
  
"Last stop," Meg drawled. Castiel undid his seatbelt, hand hovering over the car door handle.  
  
"Thank you," he said without much gratitude.  
  
"No problem. We've got some hunters stationed around to keep watch," she said, and her eyes fell to a man huddling on the street corner, with blankets and a worn and a sign. She waved, and he waved back. She turned to Cas, fumbling for something in the pocket of her jacket. "Here, take my number anyways. Call in case something goes bump in the night. Or that angel dick gets on your nerves," she said with a smirk, handing him a piece of paper with her number scrawled on it. "Or if you want some company," she said, looking him over.  
  
Cas snatched the card from her, and then exited the car without another word. He couldn’t focus on how she had just blatantly hit on him when his mind was reeling with demons and angels and ghosts and werewolves and the doubts about his parents' death. He had a million questions he wanted to ask, but Meg wasn't the one he wanted to talk to.  
  
Walking the steps up to his door was harder on him than usual. He dragged his feet, trailed a hand against the wall as he made his way. The nausea hit him as he kicked off his shoes. He stripped down as he walked to his shower, leaving his clothes behind him on the floor. Nothing else mattered but getting _clean_ , washing off the memories of the night along with the sweat at his back.  
  
As he came out of the shower, he gave a brief few minutes to the thought of calling off work the next day, but gave up after frantically looking for his phone and finding no trace of it. He would call tomorrow; Naomi was a strict boss but he'd had a great track record so far.  
  
As soon as he stepped into his sleep pants he practically dove for his bed, burying himself into the blankets and sheets and pillows, sinking into them with a sound escaping his throat that was half-sigh and half-whine. The relief was overwhelming, the smell of his detergent and the smell of his _home_. He inhaled deeply again, holding the air in his lungs for as long as he could before rolling onto his back, kicking his blankets down so he could slip his feet underneath and pull them back up over himself.  
  
His frustration grew as his inability to fall asleep ate at him. He was tired, more than he could ever remember being since childhood, and he wanted to will everything away for a few hours, to sleep and wake up and find out that he had been having a nightmare all along. That he had never contacted Leather Jacket from the library and that his life had gone on as it had been intended to: routine and normal and sometimes a little bland around the edges.  
  
His thoughts fell to Dean in an attempt to distract himself from the blood and the pain that still felt all too real. A flare of anger sparked in his stomach as he thought of how stupid he'd been, how this man had dragged him into something insane and he'd had no right whatsoever. The anger was better than the numb nothingness of before, so he latched onto it, dug his claws in and kept it close. The man that had hurt him — Alastair, that was his name, don't forget it — had known he'd been with Dean, had thought Dean had given him something or told him something he wanted to know. The demons in the diner had to have been working for Alastair, looking for him then, but Dean had gotten rid of them before they could get to him.  
  
Dean had gotten rid of Alastair, too. He'd saved his life, twice, and Castiel, as much as he wanted to, couldn't quite hate Dean knowing this. He could be angry, but hate was an emotion he struggled to feel in the first place. He never wanted to see Dean again, but he wanted to know what the _fuck_ was happening. And why Dean had thought Castiel needed to be involved.  
  
A flutter of feathers jolted him just as he had begun to doze off. He sat up straight, eyes wide, body tense and ready to lunge. He could fight, he could do something, _defend_ himself, he knew how, he wouldn't be caught by surprise this time —  
  
But the man standing by the end of his bed, shadowed in the street light coming in from his window, was a familiar face.  
  
"Dean," Cas said. "Right on cue."  
  
"I was just checking up on you. Making sure you were okay."  
  
"Oh, yes, I'm fine. I just saw a handful of people murdered in cold blood in a diner, and was then kidnapped and tortured for a while," he drawled, jaw clenched tight. Seeing Dean’s face now only caused the hot rage in Castiel’s stomach to tighten and grow, spread through his veins and cloud his mind. "But I'm _fine_."  
  
Castiel expected a witty response, but Dean looked around his room and muttered under his breath.  
  
"Yeah. S'rough."  
  
A car drove by and momentarily flooded the room with light. Dean's face was vacant, lacking the brightness that had attracted Castiel in the first place. He was holding himself stiff, mechanical.  
  
"S'rough? Is that really all you have to say? I was _tortured_ , Dean. I can still — I can still feel the knives," he said, and oh, he wanted to punch the face that turned toward him, eyes filled with something akin to pity. There was nothing he hated more than people looking at him like he was _broken_. He reacted to hurt in the only way he could think of, snapping. "He asked me about the tablet. Like I was supposed to know because you'd spoken to me," he said, and his eyes were cold, accusing.  
  
Dean stiffened and his eyes filled with a steely resolve. They locked with Castiel's and for a moment they said nothing, the only sound in the room the echoes of his fridge clicking in the kitchen. Another car passed and Cas blinked as its headlights flooded the room and swiped over where Dean was standing; great big shadows stood behind him, like wings unfurling, and Dean suddenly seemed _bigger_ , stronger. Like in the diner when they were being attacked. Castiel got the distinct impression that Dean was trying to intimidate him. He held Dean's gaze, and neither of them moved.  
  
"I'm sorry for saving your life, then," Dean said, quiet, almost soft. Honestly, Castiel would have preferred a harsh, biting tone. But Dean drawled the words out like he was disgusted, tired, like he'd rather be somewhere else.  
  
"I didn't ask you to," Castiel answered without missing a beat. He was grateful, but he didn't want Dean to feel entitled about it. Not when it was because of Dean that he had been put in life threatening situations in the first place. "I didn't ask you anything but I think I deserve some kind of explanation," he said, pushing the sheets back so he could sit up in his bed.  
  
"I already tried that. You ran off," Dean supplied, walking around the bed to sit on the mattress with Cas. He was a little off to Castiel's left, and the electricity that trickled down his spine this time was far from simply _static_ , alive and tense.  
  
"You know very little of humanity if you tell someone you're an angel and you expect them to believe you," Cas said before leaning his elbows on his knees, letting his forehead drop into his hands.  
  
"But you believed in demons right away." Dean was reproachful, almost sunken.  
  
"I was strapped to a fucking table and he was knifing me open!" Cas lashed out, glowering at Dean for being such a _child_ about this, for still not just telling him what he wanted, why he even spoke to him, for not telling him anything beyond his being an angel.  
  
"Besides, it's easier to believe in evil than it is to have faith in goodness," he added under his breath, more to himself, more about the things he once had thought true. Such as the existence of people like Dean himself, angels to watch over you, guardians of humanity.  
  
"Yeah, well, what does goodness even mean anymore," Dean scoffed. Castiel wasn't about to start making sense of that. He glanced at Dean, at the tense line of his backand his hands clasped tightly. At least Dean looked the way Castiel felt, coiled tight, a spring about to bounce.  
  
They stayed silent for a while, the sound of the light traffic outside easing Castiel's mind. It was soothing, somehow. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, to open up to the answers he wanted to hear from Dean. If he asked questions in his current state he was likely not to listen at all, and that would make them go around in circles for no reason.  
  
"I used to believe in angels," Castiel said, and once the words were out it was like opening flood gates rusted shut with age, the passage of time ruining it's hinges. These were things he rarely shared, and Dean was the last person he thought he should be sharing them with. "Angels, heaven, hell, all of it. Used to go to church, used to pray every night."  
  
"Yeah?" Dean asked, familiar, like this wasn't the first time he heard something like that. Castiel guessed it wasn't. Faith seemed to be fading, washed out by wars and laws and the slow degradation of human kind.  
  
"Alastair said something about my parents. He implied they... that their car accident wasn't just an accident, and I can't — " Castiel was not even sure why he was telling Dean this. Maybe to get Dean to reassure him that Alastair was lying. Because dealing with that, learning something new about an event in his life that had taken him years to get over, that had changed him so completely and utterly... he wasn't sure he could handle that. His parents' death had hit him hard, and at fourteen years old, his faith had been all but crushed by the revelation that good things did not happen to good people. Only terrible things happened to good people.  
  
"He was telling the truth," Dean said, and Cas stiffened, dropped his head into his hands again. His fingers sank into his hair, then tugged it tightly, but he couldn’t register the sting of his scalp. He couldn't, he was just told his parents were _murdered_. By _demons_.  
  
"They killed my parents," Castiel said, more a statement than a question. "The demons."  
  
He spoke the words in the hope that it would make them feel more real, but they only sounded crazier. All those years he'd attributed it to God taking something good from him, and all those years he'd thought either God didn't exist or had turned his back on humanity, it had been something different entirely. And maybe worse.  
  
"Cas, listen. Don't freak out on me, but I think by now you know I'm not lying or making this shit up. Either way, I was... asked to contact you to keep you safe. The demons are after our prophets, and you're on the list as a prophet-to-be," Dean said, and Cas tensed up further.  
  
"I-It's not me." His voice was more shaky than he wanted it to be. It couldn't be him, he didn't even know angels and demons existed until a few hours ago. He hadn’t stepped into church in fifteen years. He never had visions or heard any weird voices. "You've got the wrong guy," he said, swallowing a lump in his throat.  
  
He felt near _terror_ at the thought that his life had been written out and planned by God, who’d left him feeling so betrayed by at the age of fourteen ; denial rang through him so strongly. He was nothing special, had never been and would never be, and the best he could do was volunteer in shelters, to lend a hand whenever he could. He wanted to be good and help others, but on his own terms; the last thing Castiel wanted was for his life to be have been written for him by a omnipotent stranger that had let his parents die. As much as his mother had told him he was gifted, that illusion had shattered with her death.  
  
Dean was silent for a moment, and Castiel tried to force his thoughts to arrange themselves, to settle down. But they didn't, they flitted and fluttered back and forth in his mind, ideas and realizations mixing together and causing a tightness in his chest.  
  
"I don't. You've been on the list since the day you were born," he said.  
  
"No," Castiel replied immediately, gritting his teeth. "There is no way, Dean. I don't pray, I don't go to church. I don't — I didn't even believe in God anymore!" He said, turning to Dean with wide eyes, a little panicked, lost and frantic. If there were angels, then there could very well be a God, and the thought chilled him to the bone. "I don't even believe in what you stand for, Dean, do you understand that?"  
  
"Cas..." Dean started, but Castiel interrupted him with the shake of his head and a scoff.  
  
"You said you were told to protect me," he said, "To watch over me." He watched as Dean nodded, and Castiel felt the clench of his jaw harden as his voice grew more irritated. "What about my parents? You let them die, you let me get kidnapped, how is that _protecting_ me?"  
  
"Fuck, man. I messed up on that front, I should have been watching over you. I should've been there, I know, but Benny — "  
  
"You were worried," Cas said, and that he could understand, _that_ made sense. "But I don't understand how killing my parents was protecting me."  
  
"You were supposed to be in that car, Cas. It was them or you." Silence stretched in the space between them, and the small distance keeping them apart felt like miles. _It was either them or you_. The words repeated and echoed in his mind, and he looked down at his hands, clasped so tight his knuckles were turning white.  
  
"It should have been me."  
  
The words sank between them like stones in a riverbed. Dean turned his head to stare at him but Castiel ignored him, the words stewing in his guts. He had voiced the thought he'd kept to himself for years, he'd spoken words he'd felt but had never dared share with anyone. It unsettled him that it was so easy with Dean, and he stood just to _do_ something.  
  
He turned his back to Dean and then heard the rustle of wings again. When he turned to glance, Dean was gone, and a cold filled him.

He stomped off to the living room, intent on making himself a cup of tea in the hopes that the warmth and aromas of his favorite would soothe him. In the hopes that he would stop feeling disappointed that Dean had left, as if he had been glad of his company.  
  
He walked right into Dean, who hissed out a soft curse between his teeth, as he turned the corner into the living room. When Cas flicked the lights on so he could see what was happening, Dean looked sheepish as he held a cup Castiel recognized as being from a nearby coffeeshop, steam rolling over the top of it. The top cover was on the floor, and the skin of Dean’s hand was an appalling red.  
  
"I got you some tea," he said. Cas looked from the steaming cup to the burn of his skin to Dean's face, open and sorry. It was creepy that Dean had known that was exactly what he had wanted at the time, but it was well-intentioned and Cas softened at the gesture.  
  
"You need to run that under some water," he said, indicating Dean’s hand, but Dean laughed softly.  
  
"Don't think so," he said as he switched the cup to his other hand, and held the injured one out. Cas watched as the red burn marks receded. "Angel, remember."  
  
"Yeah. I remember," he said, and Dean held the cup out to him. "Thank you. How did you know —"  
  
"Just take the cup."  
  
Cas narrowed his eyes at him, but took the cup. He turned off the overhead light as he headed to the couch since, between the street lamps and cars outside, there was enough light to see by and he liked the intimacy of the gloom better.  
  
It was a little strange for him to think of Dean and intimacy in the same sentence, but his life had been turned upside down in the last twenty-four hours, and he'd already told Dean things he'd never spoken aloud, even to himself.  
  
He watched as Dean stood awkwardly, his movements still more robotic and less human than before as he came to sit down next to him. Castiel wondered if the humanity and life he'd seen in Dean during their first meeting was a facade, and this was the real Dean. Mechanical, distant, no warmth to his eyes.  
  
They sat in silence as Castiel wrapped both his hands around the cup of tea and let it warm him. The smell was soothing, too, and he closed his eyes as the only sounds filling the room were the clicks of the fridge and the cars outside.  
  
"Angels and demons, then," Castiel said to break the silence.  
  
"And vampires and werewolves. But they aren't that important to what's happening."  
  
"Which is?"  
  
Dean's mouth worked like he wanted to say something in particular but didn't know how to word it, and when he licked his lips and shrugged, resigned, Castiel somehow wasn't surprised with the answer.  
  
"A war."  
  
"Then count me in," Castiel told him with an air of finality. "I'm on your side, for what it's worth."  
  
Had his parents not been involved, had he not apparently been included in some grand scheme he wanted nothing to do with, Castiel would have chosen not to involve himself. He couldn't in good conscience refuse to help Dean when this could be his chance to get retribution for the death of his parents, when the demons were torturing and killing people who had never done harm.  
  
He didn't know what reaction he was expecting. Jubilance, something like a celebration now that Castiel, who both Heaven and Hell alike seemed to want for reasons he wasn't grasping, had chosen a side and it was his. Or something more angelic. A thank you, some graciousness. Instead, Dean tensed for just a moment, nodding once after a second suspended in silence.  
  
"Dean?" He asked, tilting his head curiously as he sipped his tea.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Are you going to tell me what's ruffling your feathers?"  
  
He got a snort in response. There was a beat during which Castiel realized what he just said.  
  
"You actually have feathers, don't you?"  
  
"Sure. Groomed and ready to preen."  
  
"Are all angels this..." Castiel waved a hand vaguely, not sure what word to use. Weird? Quirky? Infuriating? At least it was taking his mind off of things, the enormity of what he was learning, what he'd been pulled into.  
  
"Nah. I'm one of a kind," Dean shrugged, and Cas scoffed, his lips at the rim of the hot cup of tea.  
  
"Somehow, I can believe that. Now, are we going to dance around this or are you going to talk to me?"  
  
Castiel was not going to let this go. He deserved to know what was going on, and would absorb whatever information Dean was willing to give.  
  
He waited for Dean to speak, watched him as he worked his jaw and sat straight backed on his couch. His eyes traced the lines of his profile and he found himself having a hard time looking elsewhere.  
  
"Alastair — he's working for someone," Dean said, and Castiel's fingers tightened around his cup and he took a gulp that burned its way down his throat.  
  
"Before I killed him, I asked him who, and, uh."  
  
Cas must have been staring at him with a strange expression because Dean stopped and looked at him with a furrowed brow. Dean had found Castiel and had chased Alastair down, had killed him. Castiel felt weird suddenly, too hot and stifled all at once.  
  
"Keep going," he told Dean as he drank more tea. There was a pause before Dean returned his gaze to the wall, running a hand along the side of his face.  
  
"He didn't say much, didn't give much info, but he said I should ask John. Just like that, like it was the most casual thing in the world," Dean said, and Cas waited, not sure he understood, but realizing that Dean was shaken, as well. "Alastair, he's... he's a pro. He's the guy, when it comes to torturing. He works your mind as much as your body, y'know?"  
  
Castiel nodded, because he did know, and too well. It wasn't just knives and blood he saw when he closed his eyes; he heard a voice, too, words carved precisely from it. Dean seemed to suddenly realize what he said and raised his hand as if to touch Castiel's shoulder, but it dropped back to his knee without making contact.  
  
"Sorry, I just — "  
  
"It's fine, Dean. Who is John?" Castiel asked, eager for more information.  
  
"He, um, he's my garrison leader. He gives us the orders. He's the one that gave me the order to talk to you, basically."  
  
Castiel's eyebrows shot up at that revelation, lips mouthing at the rim of his cup of tea. So that had been an order. Even though he shouldn’t care,  part of him feared being told that Dean held no real interest in him. Truth be told, he'd never met someone he'd bounced off of so easily before, and Dean wasn’t even a person. It was like Dean had been made for it.  
  
Perhaps their encounter had been engineered to be that way.  
  
"How... how long have you been watching me?" He thought back to a few days ago, the weird feeling of being observed as he made his way home, and shuddered.  
  
Dean looked away, cleared his throat, and Cas figured he didn't want to know the answer. He felt so used, like he was just a pawn in their game, and that was so typical, that was so biblical.  
  
"You know, you guys might benefit from approaching people differently. Not stalking would be a good start," he said, his voice sharp as he looked everywhere but at Dean. The distance between them from earlier returned. Cas welcomed it, uncomfortable with the idea of Dean being ordered to watch over him and learn him. The thought that Dean had only gotten in contact with him because of an order was even worse.  
  
"Cas, hold up. It's not what it sounds like, I know I keep saying that, but I think even if I had been ordered to never interfere with your life, I would have. I wasn't gonna let you die, and I kinda, okay..." Dean inhaled there, slow and deep, as if to steady himself. "I like you, y'know. You're not like the others. You're... apart."  
  
"Yes, thank you for the reminder that I never fit in, Dean. It's lovely," Cas said again, before getting up, leaving the cup on the table. He was done with this, he might have sided with them on this war but he wanted answers.  
  
"What about your dreams? Your nightmares?"  
  
The words halted Cas on the way out into the hall, his hand coming to rest at the door frame.  
  
"What about them?" He said, emptying his voice of all emotion. What else did Dean know? What else had he broken his privacy for?  
  
"You don't think they mean anything? Not even after what happened?"  
  
Yes, Castiel did think they meant something. It was big, too big, though, and it shook the very foundation of what he'd built his life on: there was no God, no faith, no Heaven, no goodness out there. There was only humanity, flawed and imperfect, filled with inexplicable, terrible accidents and deaths and crimes. There was also only humanity with its soup kitchens, its charities, its volunteers, people trying to make the world a better place one tiny bit at a time. Those were the things and the people he chose to believe in, not God or his angels, his son, or his disciples.  
  
"They were visions, Cas. Not dreams. You were seeing the others." Dean spoke at last. Castiel wished he’d said nothing, because the words were the opposite of what he wanted to hear. The dreams now took a different shape, one that he knew for having experienced himself, one that made his stomach twist because they'd been real.  
  
Sighing, Cas pressed his forehead against the doorframe, his heart feeling heavy, sluggish. People had died and been tortured, suffering worse than he had, and he was meant to be next. He had been chosen. His life had been saved, by divine intervention, whether he liked it or not. Not wanting to let that chance go to waste was one thing, and stopping more innocent people from dying was another.  
  
"They were visions, and you know that thing about your instinct almost always being right? That's a prophet thing too," Dean added, and Castiel let out a slow breath. His mother had been right, and that was ironic in the most painful of ways.  
  
If he could help, he had to. God's ways had always been skeevy, and if he was running from this ordeal it was not because he'd been stalked by an angel; it was because he was downright terrified.  
  
"You can't — " Cas started, but had to stop to take a deep breath. His voice was shakier than he wanted it, adrenaline coursing through his veins with all that was being thrown at him. "You can't throw all this at someone and expect them to just take it, Dean. Not if you want them in their right mind."  
  
"Then I'll wait however long it takes. Whatever you need, Cas. But Heaven needs you. We need you," Dean said, and the vulnerability in his voice made him turn around. He was still on the couch, face darkened by the lack of lighting but outlined by the window, and Cas swallowed hard again. It was in the way Dean looked at him, pleading but determined, in the gloom and in the air between them. Castiel swallowed, and took his place back on the couch.  
  
"I want answers. I need to know everything that's going on," he said.  
  
"Okay. Shoot."  
  
"What do the demons want? Alastair kept asking for a tablet," Castiel said, and Dean nodded.  
  
"Yeah, there's a demon and an angel tablet. Only the prophets can read 'em, and there can only be one prophet at a time. They've been picking them off at random, thinking we gave the tablet to one of you."  
  
"Nice." Castiel wasn't surprised, somehow, that innocent people were being roped into Heaven's wars. But Dean had saved his life, after all. It gave Castiel a reason to make things good. To show Dean that it wasn't for nothing, that he was not going to throw his life away after it had been saved twice. Orders or not, he was still here because Dean had made it so.  
  
"I know how it sounds, dude! Ugh, this is a fucking mess." Dean ran both hands through his hair, sighing as he shook his head, as if to rid himself of this situation. Castiel could barely comprehend that it had only been one day. They'd been attacked by demons on a... date, he was loathe to admit, and then he'd been kidnapped and tortured. Good stuff.  
  
"Color me surprised. Demons and angels, a mess?" He raised an eyebrow, a faint smile on his lips, and Dean snorted and looked away, but not before Cas caught the amusement there.  
  
"So this tablet, is it like the ten commandments?"  
  
"The tablets are a sort of rule book, I guess. Instructions. There's one for demons, and it lists everything about them. Their creation, their weaknesses. How to control one, banish one, kill one. It's got it all."  
  
Castiel nodded, listening. He could guess the rest, but he let Dean talk, allowed for him to let this out, too.  
  
"Then there's the angel tablet. That's the one they want, apparently."  
  
"Makes sense, if it's an instruction manual for angels," Cas said, and Dean sighed.  
  
"Yeah, well, this shit is supposed to be kept under wraps even for high-ranked angels, so the knowledge floating around isn't exactly a good thing. The demons knowing about them... kind of a bad sign."  
  
Dean's worry practically oozed out of him, his concern filling the lines in the crease of his brow. Castiel imagined that a secret several millennia old suddenly being common knowledge was worrisome, and more so when demons were after the most important piece of information for angels. His brush with Hell's pawns told him enough; they would stop at nothing, and that much power in their hands was the last thing he wanted.  
  
"How can I help?"  
  
Dean turned to him with a tiny smile, and Cas couldn't help but return it.  
  
"What?" he asked, and Dean shook his head.  
  
"Nothing, you're just..."  
  
"I'm what?"  
  
"You really would seriously throw yourself into a war between angels and demons? Just like that?"  
  
Cas shrugged, and his smile widened. It was crazy, said like that, but if the demons had caused his parents' death, Cas was willing to play his part, however much he hated the idea of his life having been written out for him.  
  
Choosing Heaven did not mean giving into their pre-written path for him. He would make his own choices, and this would be his first.  
  
"I'll have to check my planner but I think I can squeeze that in there."  
  
Dean let out a soft laugh, and Cas wished circumstances had been different. That meeting Dean hadn't led to torture and discovering all his nightmares were real. That meeting Dean didn't say you were wrong, we've been there all along, up there. So much of his life had been centered around his loss of faith, and now there was proof sitting next to him, smelling like leather and thunderstorms, a hurricane that swept in and had turned his world upside down.  
  
"Okie dokie," Dean said, letting out an amused huff of breath. Cas wrinkled his nose and squinted at Dean, because, really? Okie dokie?  
  
"Where did you learn to talk like that?" He asked.  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Like a human." Not only was Dean's speech pattern not what he had expected from a divine being, his name, too, was an odd one. "And what kind of angel name is Dean?"  
  
"Observing, mostly. Also imitation is a form of flattery and man, I wanna flatter all over humanity. That's exactly why I messed my name around so it was more human."  
  
"You're really weird, you know that?"  
  
"Look who's talking. Mr. Boring Routine with barely any friends — "  
  
Castiel threw a pillow at Dean, who ducked as he laughed. There was no need to bring up his otherness again.  
  
"I'm kidding!"  
  
"Of course you are. I wouldn't say I'm friendless, anyways. I've got an ally who saved my life twice tonight," he added.  
  
Dean looked like he was expecting more, so Castiel spoke again.  
  
"And by that I mean you."  
  
"Oh. I knew that," Dean said with a sheepish grin, rubbing the back of his neck. Castiel was once again fascinated by how human he seemed, and at once reminded of the crackle of static he'd felt at his touch earlier, of the smell of it in his nose.  
  
"Oh my god, Dean."  
  
"No, I did! I'm joking with you," Dean laughed, and Cas couldn't help but smile at the way his face lit up with it. He liked this better than the tense lines of his shoulders and back from earlier. The mechanical, robotic way he'd moved had been far from natural on him, even if he was an angel.  
  
"You're an idiot. I can't believe you're an angel of the Lord," Cas scoffed, bringing his feet up on the couch, tucking them under him. His eyes were growing heavy. It was way later than he was used to staying up, and it was also way too late for someone who had just gone through enough trauma for a lifetime. Somehow, though, the banter with Dean eased those thoughts out of his mind.  
  
"Hey, watch it. I'm a soldier," Dean said, with amusement in his voice like he couldn't quite believe it himself. Castiel hummed, and then silence fell between them, comfortable again. He put the cup of tea down on the coffee table, and then curled up on the couch, pressed closer to Dean than before.  
  
Sleep was weighing on his eyelids, but he blinked his eyes open.  
  
"I hope your friend is okay," he muttered, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He was too tired to think very clearly, and thankfully his exhaustion was chasing away the images of his kidnapping.  
  
"Benny? He's okay, yeah. Andrea is fine, too, but he's kinda pissed about his diner," Dean said, and Castiel nodded, even though he was beginning to tune out in exhaustion.  
  
"Do angels sleep?" he muttered, voice lowering with somnolence, his head dropping against Dean's shoulder. He was too tired to notice, or care, and didn't feel the way Dean shifted under him. Dean cleared his throat but didn't move away, and Castiel's eyes closed. Dean was warm, like there was a thrumming energy below his skin.  
  
"No," Dean whispered, but that was the last Castiel heard before he fell asleep.


	6. Chapter Six

The night was cool when Dean finally took his leave from Castiel's sleeping form and found himself in a park, abandoned at this time of night. His vessel's skin objected to the chill even with his jacket and jeans on, and he concentrated on the feeling of gooseflesh as it appeared. The temperature had no effect on him, an angel wrapped in flesh and blood, but his wings weighed heavy with fatigue on his shoulders, settling with a slight hum of contentment when he decided that it would do for now.  
  
He began to walk, seeking out a bench and, after a once-over appraisal, sitting down. The breath he allowed to escape was a heavy one, a sigh like he was exhaling this whole damn day out of him..  
  
It was with another sound of feathers that Dean's respite was broken, and he turned to look at the new presence beside him.  
  
"He's safe?" Sam asked, priority always first, and Dean nodded.  
  
"Completely. All tucked in and sleeping like a baby. Or, y'know, like someone who was just used as a pincushion."  
  
Sam didn't seem especially put at ease with the answer, and Dean took a moment to check the state of his brother's vessel. Clean, orderly. Obviously recovered from breaking and entering Alastair's little hideaway, which was great, but obviously also still getting to really _fit_ right. Sam wore his vessel like it was a shirt three sizes too small, fibers stretched thin over a being shoved in taut. He wore it, he didn't claim it; he fit himself _in_ rather than fitting the flesh _around_.  
  
Dean remembered feeling like that from way too long ago, but his vessel was more than natural now. The man that had once inhabited the body had moved on so quickly after Dean had asked consent. He'd already been teetering over the verge of death when Dean had intervened, hesitant to take someone who had a full life ahead of them. This man had been good — he'd gone down fighting, defending his beliefs. Dean's intervention had allowed him to pass on peacefully rather than bloody.  
  
Sam took the silence between them as a chance to read between the lines and Dean tried very hard not to think about all of the questions he had for John.  
  
Of course, Sam picked up on it.  
  
"Do you really think... he had anything to do with it?" he said slowly, and Dean glared in frustration at the ground. If he couldn't answer that for himself, what made Sam think that he could answer it for the both of them? Dean's gaze slid back over to Sam and he did his absolute best to look entirely sure of himself and his reply when he spoke, voice taut.  
  
"No. He's our leader, he wouldn't." His jaw clenched and Sam canted his head, eyes moving to gaze out at the park. After another quiet moment, this one strained and difficult, Sam sat beside Dean and the older angel shifted, trying to conserve space. "You can't just ask stuff like that, Sam, there's not even any evidence! Demons lie. Alastair _lied_."  
  
"Forget I asked, then, Dean," Sam mumbled under his breath.  
  
The remorse was immediate, Sam's words feeling like a slap in the face. Dean knew that he could have been kinder and that he could have made sure Sam didn't think that it was his fault that Castiel was taken in the first place. They'd come far too close for comfort with Alastair, and Sam had always had a nasty martyr streak.  
  
Dean, a wry upturn of his lips appearing as he turned his head away from his brother, wondered where exactly he might have learned that.  
  
"Castiel — he's fine." The older angel exhaled, straightened up in his seat and let himself fall back to recline, lips pursed in thought. "Alastair's dead. John's gonna want one of us t'stop by, make sure he knows what's happening too."  
  
Sam's lack of reply was answer enough, and Dean frowned.  
  
"He _didn't_ ," Dean insisted. "He wouldn't work with Alastair. Hardly works with us as it is! Why would he be business partners with a demon? It’s not addin' up, Sam. Don't take a demon's word over our leader's."  
  
"I know," Sam said, and there was a weariness in his voice Dean hadn't caught before. "I know. Sorry. It's just been rough. Up top. Everyone's getting worried. I haven't been home in a while, but... I hear things, I know enough. Charlie's even starting to hope she gets transferred down here."  
  
"Right, but — that's Heaven. Cas is _our_ main concern, we're in the field."  
  
"He's got first-class written all over him. Demons want him."  
  
Sam's eyes said more than his tone did, but the question Dean read there was not a question he felt like answering. After all, he’d just come to the park from the prophet falling asleep on his shoulder like he did it every fucking day, as if that wasn't weird enough. It had been nice, yeah, having Cas' all-too-human warmth like that, comforting. Dean hadn't realized just how muchhe didn't want Castiel to get into the hands of demons like Alastair until it had happened. He didn't even think anyone but Sam realized what a big step it was for him to relent to the idea of getting a hunter's help, especially help from a hunter like Meg.  
  
But Sam definitely realized.  
  
And it was written all over his stupidly smug vessel's face.  
  
" _What_?" Dean finally spat out, and Sam shrugged helplessly, throwing hands up in defense.  
  
"Nothing, I didn't say anything!"  
  
"But you were _thinking_ it."  
  
"Dean, you're being immature."  
  
"You're being evasive."  
  
"Don't start with me —"  
  
"Maybe I'll just go tell Meg how you were eyeing her —"  
  
" _Dean!_ "  
  
They were both quiet for a moment, and then Sam cleared his throat.  
  
"You established contact by _going on a date_ with him," Sam was saying when Dean cut him off with a "whoa, whoa, whoa!"  
  
"You were the one that told me to," Dean protested. Still, Sam's glare told him to _shut up and sit back and let him talk about this_ ,so Dean did exactly that, even if he wasn’t happy about it. He huffed loudly as he scowled at his brother. What gave Sam the right to be all hoity-toity know-it-all about humans and human customs all of a sudden? Dean had been here for literally thousands of years. Comparatively, Sam was practically an infant. A fetus. Not even _conceived_.  
  
"No, I told you to make contact, not start courting him," Sam clarified, continuing before Dean got the chance to inform him that nobody used the word courting anymore. What human resources had he used, a copy of _Social Nuance_ from 1800? "You twisted it for your own intentions, Dean. You could've just broken into his home to ID him, or — or, hell, I dunno, asked what the weather was like. Obviously you had some kind of ulterior motive, or you wouldn't have done it."  
  
Was this what the humans would consider The Talk with his angelic baby brother?  
  
Dean wished he was the one that was sleeping, if only to avoid this conversation.  
  
Sam was still criticizing Dean's creative interpretation and Dean had been tuning him out, so he figured he might as well start listening again. But he had his arms crossed, face expressing all of the displeasure that he could dredge up at this turn in the conversation, glaring invisible daggers at Sam until he finally trailed off with an expectant look.  
  
"Dean," Sam said.  
  
"Sam."  
  
"What are you trying to do?" Sam asked.  
  
The question was heavy, weighted, and Dean pursed his mouth into a line of refusal, slouching. He was trying to keep Castiel safe, first of all, but he'd made it worse by attracting _Alastair's_ attention, as if it had been ruled that no other easier-to-handle demon could have been the one to notice. Dean should have dealt with his orders by simply popping into Castiel's apartment and scoping it out. Not talking to him. Not trying to get to know him. He'd gone on a fucking date with the guy. That was hardly a good decision.  
  
Dean had been the responsible one making calls for thousands of years and _one meeting_ with a prophet nearly cost him everything.  
  
He stood up, hands going behind his head as he stretched his back. This was war. He couldn't afford pleasantries, had no time to waste on playing around. It would be strictly business between he and Cas — _Castiel_ — from now on, to keep him safe and hopefully make sure no other demons got ahold of his prophet. Their prophet. Castiel.  
  
"I'm trying to do my job," Dean said.  
  
The memory of Alastair's wheezing laughter mocked him when he tried to ignore Sam's scrutinizing expression.  
  
 _What are you trying to do?_ he'd demanded of the white-eyed demon. Alastair had laughed and laughed, a phlegm-filled croak, but never hysterical, never not exactly how Alastair wanted himself to sound, and Dean's grip on his sword had tightened.  
  
 _Why don't you ask your John? About his precious little Mary._  
  
Dean's arms fell to his sides as he stole a glance to Sam, who caught the attempt at a secret peek with a mixture of sympathy and concern.  
  
"Hey, uh. Sam, you know anything about anyone named Mary?"  
  
Sam's expression changed to one of confusion.  
  
"Mary?"  
  
"Yeah, human. Angel. Anyone."  
  
Dean waited impatiently while Sam mentally went through whatever catalogued lists he'd had to organize and renovate before ditching and coming down here, but when Sam shook his head in denial it wasn't what Dean was hoping for — or it was exactly what Dean was hoping for, because Alastair had probably just made it up to fuck with Dean's head. Further proof of John's innocence. He waved it away, moving on with the next subject as if he'd had no reason to ask in the first place.  
  
"So you said something about Charlie?"  
  
Sam seemed to think better of pursuing the previous topic and Dean turned to face him, grateful that the conversation had turned away from the topics of Castiel, John, or Alastair. Sam cleared his throat with a minor cough, obviously fake, and Dean’s eyebrow raise in response was plaintively ignored by Sam.  
  
"She's keeping the conflict under control to the best of her ability, and it’s Charlie, so you know her ability is pretty amazing," Sam told him. Dean nodded. "But stuff's getting crazy up top. Some angels think the demons have the upper hand. They're getting nervous."  
  
"Getting _nervous_?" Dean repeated with an incredulous tone. He hadn't been home in a long time, so he had little idea of what was going on up there. If angels who had hardly ever, and sometimes never, been to Earth were getting nervous, they had to know something that he definitely didn’t. More than ever, it was frustrating to be out of the loop , and Dean made a mental note for himself to contact Charlie and get the details from her.  
  
"Not in our garrison," Sam clarified hastily, sitting up straighter. "But in other parts. Factions. So I hear."  
  
"What you don't see with your eyes, you can't witness with your mouth."  
  
"Did you just Chinese proverb me — _Dean_. I'm just telling you what I know."  
  
Dean's answering grin was enough to make Sam press his lips together and frown with his eyebrows.  
  
"There were reasons I put off joining you down here," Sam warned when Dean snickered.  
  
The ensuing quiet was heavy with an unspoken question. It wasn't uncomfortable, simply trying Dean's patience, which was already  dwindling the longer he stayed with humans rather than angels. He he wondered if the loss of his patience, that ability to _be still and know_ had made him any less of an angel.  
  
"Out with it, Sammy."  
  
"Aren't you homesick? Down here all the time?"  
  
It was a better question than all the other ones Sam had asked since they'd met here. Dean looked at the ground and scuffed his shoe on the concrete, a reluctant smile tugging the edges of his lips up.  
  
"No," he admitted with no small amount of guilt as he shrugged. "My allegiance's always gonna be with Heaven, with home, but... I dunno, Sam. I like it here. I like the people. I like Earth. Dad's creations are pretty damn awesome. They help each other when they need it, and they want to know everything and sure as hell _try_ to get to know everything, but everything's a lot of things. And they're only mortal. But they still make an effort, even though they're living with a timer ticking over their heads. It's — it's not like Heaven. We know everything already. There's no _awe_ about it anymore. But here? Every little thing is _new_ even when it's old."  
  
"You love them."  
  
Dean had expected contempt or pity, not curious acceptance. Dean blinked, looking back to his brother.  
  
"Yeah. I mean, yeah. I guess I do."  
  
A certain human with a peaceful way of sleeping and good arm for throwing a pillow came to mind and Dean clamped down on it, pushing the thought to the back of his head.  
  
Sam stood up then, wearing a pleased smile, and when he brushed past Dean, his barely-there touch spoke of support. Welcome, almost, and Dean was caught off guard enough not to mention it before Sam disappeared, leaves disturbed from their resting places on the sidewalk by breeze from his wings.  
  
Dean stood in place for a long time after Sam was gone.

 

* * *

 

When Cas woke up he was no longer on his couch. Disoriented, he wondered if he'd dreamed Dean visiting him last night, his memories of Dean’s presence bathed in muted orange light and gloom. Maybe he'd dreamed the whole thing. A man could hope, right?  
  
He yawned and rubbed at his eyes, padding to the kitchen. He blinked blearily at the living room and saw the forgotten cup of tea on the table. So, Dean _had_ been there, then, and somehow got him to bed before taking his leave. Wherever he'd gone Castiel was sure that he would be back, and that it was more important than sticking around. If what Dean said had been right, a war was brewing, and Castiel could — but didn’t want to — imagine the consequences if Heaven lost.  
  
Cas grabbed himself a bowl of cereal and sat down, trying to get through life minute by minute. So he had offered to lend a hand to Heaven to fight their war. Whatever that meant, it couldn't be good, and as he chewed his Cinnamon Crunch he wondered if he was truly ready for the implications. He might be asked to give his life, and would he, for the greater good? Maybe he’d be asked for even more — it wasn't like the angels worked on a normal human scale of life and death, after all.  
  
The sound of flapping wings jerked him out of his thoughts, and he turned around, ready to scold Dean for not learning to use the door. But the angel standing before him wasn’t Dean. He was older, wore a suit and tie, and had a low voice when he spoke.  
  
"Castiel, right? May I sit for a minute?" he asked.  
  
"And you are?" Cas said, not acknowledging the man's request. He didn't need to verify if the stranger was an angel or not; his method of entrance was telling enough, as was the awkward, straight-backed way he held himself, like someone in a costume ill-fitted and too small for them. Castiel was disinclined to be polite, however.  
  
"John," the man said, holding out his hand for Cas to shake. Cas glanced at it but then returned to his cereal while John remained standing. Good. This had to be _the_ John, the one Dean had mentioned last night. The one whose name Alastair had dropped.  
  
"I'm just going to finish this," Castiel said between bites, motioning to his cereal. John smiled, amicable, but Castiel didn't buy it. He stood to put his dishes in the sink when he was finished, and then took his time pouring himself a glass of juice while pointedly not offering John any. Not that angels needed food, despite Dean's appreciation of it.  
  
"How can I help you?" Cas asked finally, sipping at his juice and looking at John with small, watchful eyes. He didn't want to mistrust him on the get-go, but Dean being good didn't mean _Heaven_ was good and he would be sure to keep that in mind. Really, it was Dean he'd accepted to help, and not Heaven itself, not after they let that happen to his parents. His involvement with Alastair was yet to be confirmed but Castiel preferred to take precautions.  
  
"You've met... Dean, as he calls himself, haven't you?" John said, choosing to lean against the wall rather than sit. Cas quirked an eyebrow at him and nodded.  
  
"Yes, I have. Why?"  
  
"Ah, he's something, isn't he?" John chuckled and Cas shrugged, putting down his glass of juice. He didn't really want any, now that his cereal was churning in his stomach. "He doesn't look or sound like it but he's one of the brightest in the garrison. It's too bad he likes it better down here."  
  
"Isn't that how it's supposed to go?"  
  
John's smile didn't move, but something in his face did somehow, and Castiel felt its cold amusement. Mouthing off at an angel was likely less than wise, but he'd never been one to sit in silence for someone he felt such little respect for. John pushed himself off the wall, running a hand through his hair with a sigh.  
  
"I just wanted to warn you, he's a little _too_ into humanity," John said, diverting from Castiel's jab. What was John even doing here, and what was he trying to say, exactly? With the little knowledge of Heaven and angels he had, Castiel wasn't one to judge what _too into humanity_ could even begin to imply.  
  
"I don't know what you're trying to say," he said, flatly, before leaning back against his kitchen counter and crossing his arms. "Looks like angels have some trouble getting to the point."  
  
The smell of static that usually accompanied Dean's presence was here too, but heavier, carrying more power, more charge. It should have made Cas wary or afraid, but instead he was encouraged and wanted to show how much he did not fear Heaven or its soldiers. Besides the ever-present angel smell of ozone, there was another smell in the air. Though subtle, it stung his nostrils.  
  
"Haha, alright, Castiel. I'm just worried. We're like a family, you know, in our garrison, and we take these things seriously. I wouldn't want him to forget where he belongs," John said, and Castiel frowned. John met his eyes and although he was still smiling, Castiel could feel more brewing in that smile and he decided that no, he neither trusted nor liked John, garrison leader. John was _threatening_ him and seemed to think Dean was unable to keep himself focused on the task at hand. What kind of leader had such little faith in his so-called family?  
  
"I don't think you need to concern yourself about that," Castiel said, his eyes narrowed as he grit his teeth. There was something he needed to ask, even though he knew the risk in the question. "Though he did have some concerns himself. Have you heard about Alastair?"  
  
Although Castiel watched John for any minute change in his expression or posture, anything that would give away acknowledgement or a reaction, he saw nothing. John was steel, cold and solid; so unlike Dean, gold and softening to warmth.  
  
"I've heard of his death, yes," he said. "You have my deepest apologies about that ordeal. He warded the place well, and it took us longer than it should have to find you," he continued, causing Cas' dislike to grow again. As far as he knew John had had nothing to do with his rescue, and it was thanks to Sam and Meg that they had found him. Still, he pressed on.  
  
"Apology accepted, but I didn't think Heaven needed to call on humans for help," he replied, arms crossed, hoping angels could read body language. "If angels belong up there, why was one sent here?"  
  
"That's a long and complicated story, Castiel. I can take the time to tell it to you one day, now that we unfortunately got you involved. I'll have you know it was far from our intention, and if there's anything, anything at all we can do for you, just call, okay?"  
  
The offer was genuine enough, the apologetic look mastered to perfection, but Castiel still couldn't help but feel like this was only a facade. It felt plastic, almost _too_ genuine. Besides, the offer left a bitter taste in his mouth with the knowledge that Heaven had watched demons orchestrate his parents' death. They had saved his life at least three times, but hadn’t bothered with his parents, and that was hard to just forgive and forget.  
  
"What about God? What's his take on all this?" It wasn't an entirely subtle way to seek confirmation that if angels existed so did God, and Castiel's arms crossed tighter against his chest as he waited for the answer. He could feel his pulse beat behind his eyes, and his mouth was dry.  
  
John laughed, throwing his head back and shaking his head.  
  
"God? God is on long term vacation. Haven't seen or heard from him for a while," John explained, and Castiel didn't know if he was relieved or not, especially considering the note of bitterness in John's voice. At least he could understand that; being abandoned by your Father had to be hard to swallow. It did explain a lot, however, and it made Castiel feel less guilty for losing faith and thinking God had forgotten about him. Apparently, he had.  
  
"As for Alastair, Dean might be reasonably upset, but demons have a way with words, as I'm sure you know. Whatever the demon said to Dean was engineered to trouble him, so I would put that behind us for now. Dean will quickly enough, just as he'll move on from this."  
  
The more John spoke the less Castiel believed or trusted him. He was being placated, plain and simple. He was being told there was nothing to worry about as a nuclear mushroom rose on the horizon; someone was putting a blindfold on him and leading him to supposed safety that would most likely turn out to be slaughter.  
  
He didn't trust John, and he didn't like the way he spoke of Dean.  
  
"What do you mean, move on from this?"  
  
"I mean, now that Alastair is dead, it's over. Our prophets are safe, and Dean has no reason to linger. He'll be assigned another mission, as is customary," John explained, and Castiel felt his blood run cold. It wasn't surprising, not really, but Dean had grown on him like fucking weeds in a garden. Dean had, however, saved his life _on orders_ , had only been obeying what he was told. He had even contacted him on the same basis, and any illusions he had that Dean cared about him should not have existed in the first place.  
  
"Oh, right, of course," he nodded, deciding to keep for himself the fact that he had agreed to help in this way, deciding that perhaps that information should stay between him and Dean for now. If Dean ever showed up again, that was. There was a small chance John was right about this, being Dean's _leader_ , of all people. "If you ever need me for anything else, you know where to find me," Castiel said, giving John a tight smile. The man nodded, pointed a finger to the ceiling and grinned.  
  
"Anything. You call, I'll come down, alright?" He said, and Cas nodded. He wanted John to leave now, if only so Cas could come up with subtle ways to call Dean to his apartment to ask him what the fuck was up with his garrison leader. "Just remember, Dean is prone to overreacting. Alastair was nothing."  
  
"Thank you, sir," he said, even though the words _Alastair was nothing_ made him feel sick. To Castiel, Alastair was a real living nightmare he had somehow survived.  
  
John nodded and vanished with a ruffle in the blink of an eye, just before Castiel opened his mouth to snap something at him. It was then, after the wind of John's flight brushed at his hair and his face, that Castiel realized the smell hadn't been incense; it was the smell of sulfur clinging to clothing like cigarette smoke to hair.


	7. Chapter Seven

Soon after, Castiel heard the flutter of wings from his bedroom and hurried out to the living room, and it was Dean he found there, leaning against the wall.  
  
"You're back," he said, keeping a rein on his own relief. He didn't feel up to meeting any other angels, because if John was anything to go by, they were dicks. Still, Castiel didn't dare hope. If Dean was just an angel on a mission, it was better to act detached and remote. "Everything okay?" he asked, stalling the moment he would bring up his doubts about Dean's leader.  
  
Dean pushed off the wall, as if he wanted to move a little closer.  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, talked to Sam, discussed John. He's, uh." Dean crossed his arms, gesturing a dismissal wave in the air. "We decided that he's not working with Alastair, no way he could be. Demons are sneaky like that. Hopefully you won't have to learn that more firsthand. But yeah, everything's fine. You sleep good?"  
  
Cas' jaw clenched. It felt like betrayal to tell Dean he thought otherwise when he had only met the other angel once. John meant something to Dean, and to Sam, and Castiel's opinion probably wasn’t wanted here. But his gut was telling him John couldn't be trusted, that behind the smiles and the offers to come when called there was an emptiness, if not something worse.  
  
And then there was the stink of sulfur that had accompanied him. After volunteering for the homeless Castiel had met all kinds of people, liars and beggars and manipulators, users and abusers; while he wasn't sure which category John fit into, it was definitely not _saint_ , angel or not.  
  
"How can you be sure?" Cas asked, his hand rubbing the side of his arm. "It's possible, isn't it?" His gaze remained steady, not backing down.  
  
"It's not possible," Dean said immediately, head tilting up slightly in defense. "Not at all, he wouldn't. He's our leader. There's a better chance of Newton's laws suddenly getting debunked by a fifth grader — and I have it on good authority that Newton was spot on - than there is John working with gutter scum."  
  
Castiel frowned down at the floor, finally averting Dean's gaze.  
  
"He came to see me earlier, and I spoke to him for a bit," Cas said. There were so many other players in the war that Alastair could have framed — why John, why "ask John"? It had to mean something.  
  
Convincing Dean of that might be difficult, so he steeled himself, John's words ( _prone to overreact_ ) dancing in his ears. He didn't want to upset him, but this was bigger than just the two of them. John had tried so blatantly to throw him off their tracks, to shake him off of their business that he couldn't let it be ignored.  
  
"I don't know, Dean. I think… you should look into it first," he sighed, his eyes finding Dean's again. He was legitimately apologetic for delivering bad news, delivering more shit to Dean’s life, but he truly hoped Dean would understand and at least try to find this out for sure. That he would trust him.  
  
Quiet greeted his words. Dean looked like he was trying not to take offense, which Castiel could understand. He was asking Dean to open his mind up to the possibility that the man who had taught him everything and he had fought alongside of, was working with the enemy, perhaps even against Heaven.  
  
"But he wouldn't work with a demon," Dean said like he had to clarify it, words slow and measured. "He wouldn't, Cas, there isn't anything to look into! Just a whole lot of blank nothing, because Alastair lied. He lies, that's what demons do, they all do that."  
  
"And a day ago I didn't believe beings like you were real," Cas said, opting to try and reason with Dean first. This was too big a deal to simply let go, because if John truly was working with demons, nothing they did would serve a purpose, because they’d keep focusing on the wrong thing and fight against the wrong people. "You proved me wrong. Wouldn't you like to prove me wrong again? Ask around, then you can prove he's not working with John instead of having blind faith," he said, and then paused, the irony of his words not unclear to him. He smiled to himself, without humor. "Though I guess that's all you're taught to do."  
  
He regretted his comment immediately. Dean's body took on a tense, charged posture, and there was a shift in the room again, like static electricity was dancing on the currents of the air he was inhaling. Cas felt it in his nose, and he was about to apologize as he could see the hurt in the way Dean dropped his arms from where they were, tensing. Dean was an angel, atemporal. Immortal. Not unfeeling, however, from the way his eyes lost their warmth and turned to steel.  
  
"I may be an angel, but I'm not ignorant, and neither are any of my siblings. I've spent long enough here to know that. I'm a warrior, and I trust my instincts when it comes to my own family," he said, firm and angry. "Alastair got that much into your head to make you think that's the truth?"  
  
Right. Because Castiel was human and weak and easy to manipulate, that had to be the only reasoning behind his doubt — he had been broken. Alastair had _tortured him,_ which seemed to go over the angels' heads more often than not. It seemed testament to how little he mattered in their big picture, and even though he was holding up well, he didn't like the casual way the angels treated the subject.  
  
"Alastair has nothing to do with this," Castiel gritted, standing up straight, his fists clenching at his sides. He couldn't help it, not when Dean was getting riled up, as the space between them grew smaller without their noticing. Castiel had stepped closer, jaw clenched and eyes focused on Dean's. "Alastair or not, there's something up with John, and I think looking into it will be far from a waste of your time."  
  
He paused, took a breath, and then added: "If you think so little of humanity's mental capacities, then maybe you should stop trying to emulate us."  
  
"It's not — I didn't mean it like that," Dean hissed, and another couple of inches that separated them disappeared. "It doesn't matter what I meant but it matters that you somehow seem to think that you know the leader of my garrison better than I do after one little chat! What was so damn telling, Sherlock? Go ahead, enlighten me."  
  
Castiel should not have expected Dean to trust him. John had lead him for millennia, after all, and Castiel was just human, a prophet to be, chosen by some divine arbitrary order. But if Dean wanted to involve him in this, if he thought they needed his help, then he shouldn’t have expected Castiel to sit by and shut up. Castiel didn't want to be a _tool_ , he didn't want to be used to find this stupid tablet only to be forgotten once the deed was done. If he was going to do this, he was going to be treated as an equal.  
  
"If Sam told you what I'm telling you, would you doubt him, too?" he asked, knowing that was unfair and comparing their relationship was far from acceptable. They were on entirely different planes. Dean and Cas had _just met_ , for fuck's sake, and yet he felt as if they'd shared a bond for most of his life. "I agreed to help you in your little war but I expect some respect, because I am not just a _tool_ , I am not going to stand there and listen to you blindly while you're missing what's right in front of you!"  
  
"Sam —" Dean started before his mouth clamped shut with a click of teeth and a slightly bewildered expression. _Sam would agree with me_ , Cas realized as Dean exhaled through his nose and went on, bypassing that little bump in the road. "I respect you just fine, Cas, but not your opinion about John, that's different, this is _different_ , you don't go around saying shit like that!"  
  
Dean was so wired to believe without question, always had been, and this was shaking him up. That fact that was causing Castiel some distress of his own. He didn't want to destroy an angel's faith, but this was _war_ , and Dean had said so himself.  
  
"You just _don't_ ," Dean repeated, and the space had grown smaller still.  
  
Dean was standing close now, nearly eye to eye. Castiel refused to step away or back down, refused to let Dean's words convince him. What he had felt in John's presence couldn't be described, but every fiber of his being told him to follow its path. If doing so caused Dean to despise him, then so be it: Castiel did not want to be part of something with blind faith, something that looked away while more people were tortured and killed by demons.  
  
"Dean, why would I be making this up?" he asked, desperation edging around his voice. "I know this is hard, I know how it is to want to believe, so much, but sometimes — sometimes you're wrong," he said, the last words coming out almost as a whisper. Trying to convince an angel that Heaven was corrupt was like trying to break a diamond with chalk.  
  
"I'm not wrong," Dean said, quiet, matching Cas' low tone, and it sounded too much like pleading for it to feel right coming out of his mouth. "I'm not. I know John."  
  
Dean moved as if he wanted to step away, but he didn't; he only vehemently stared Castiel down, who held his gaze right back. Neither of them moved as they kept staring, both too stubborn to step back despite their awkward proximity.  
  
"You are wrong," Cas said, his voice steady and firm, his mouth a thin line as his jaw clenched. Standing up to an angel was a terrible idea and he had no desire to get acquainted with any divine wrath, but the past few days had taught Castiel that there were things worse than death. "You are wrong, and you are too stubborn to see it, and you wanted my help and now you're telling me _no_ ," he hissed, gritting his teeth, his hands itching to _grab_ , to roughly pull closer, and he couldn't tell if he wanted to head butt Dean or just shove his face at him and it didn't seem to matter.  
  
"I'm telling you no because you're just — it's dumb, it's stupid." Dean’s hands clenched and unclenched, and Castiel _gaped_. "There isn't anything to be suspicious about, so why won't you just drop it?"  
  
"It's _dumb_?" Cas asked, eyebrows raised in disbelief. Had Dean really said that, that his opinion, his _suggestion_ was stupid? And he wanted Castiel fighting for his side?  
  
Yeah, right.  
  
"You're telling me no because I'm just _what_ , Dean? Huh? Because I'm human and weak and flawed and _stupid_?" he said, and he was angry now, seething, and his hands came to shove at Dean, to do _something_ , because he wanted so badly to knock some sense into him and to make him trust him and believe in him and he wanted, wanted _something_. Something.  
  
"I take it back," he hissed through gritted teeth, not backing down. "I take it back, I'm not helping you in your bullshit war, I'm not helping you and your — stupid — jacket," he said, smacking Dean’s arm on the last word. Dean blinked, stunned into silence. It wasn't really intended to harm, but it was anger and frustration rolled up inside Castiel from all that had happened so far and how little credit Dean was giving him after all that.  
  
But why would he? He was a stranger. He didn't feel like one, but he was.  
  
"You can't take it back!" Dean protested, reaching to grab Castiel's wrist in a loose hold. "You can't take it back, and you can't call a war _bullshit_ , and my jacket's not stupid, what the fuck, stop being — just _stop_."  
  
He paused, taking a deep breath, and Castiel told himself _this is going to be good_ , and then Dean said:  
  
"If my jacket's stupid, your face is stupid." Spiteful, angry and bitter, and Castiel blinked and felt anger swell inside him again. What the fuck, was Dean a _child_?!  
  
"I _can_ take it back!" Cas cried out, glaring wide eyed as Dean caught his wrist. He tried to jerk it away, roughly, and Dean let go. Rude, out of line — they weren't even arguing about stupid clothes, they were arguing about more important things, more... vital, critical points of... Fuck, what were they arguing about?  
  
"Your war is bullshit if you can't accept that not everything is black or white, and who even wears leather jackets?! You are infuriating!" He cried out, grabbing Dean's jacket and shoving again, but keeping his grip steady, keeping him there.  
  
His anger was no longer rational, and beneath it he felt something more, because Dean had crawled there under his skin and drove him crazy. As much as their banter had been easy the previous night, as much as he'd felt comfortable enough to fall asleep on him, right now he wanted nothing more but to punch Dean's face in, maybe with his mouth. No, wait, with a fist.  
  
Definitely his fist.  
  
"Don't insult my face after I just insulted your face, that's copying and it makes you sound even _more_ stupid than you already did!"  
  
Dean made Castiel feel like a ten-year-old, arguing about faces - making him think about Dean's, with its stupid freckles and lips and his nice green eyes and his stupid smile that made Castiel feel so warm and nice inside and this was gross, this was so _childish_.  
  
"Stop it, it's hard to focus when you're being so demandingly — just — demanding," Dean said, displeased and huffy.  
  
At this point Castiel had begun to yell over Dean's own voice, tuning it out, only catching bribes as they squabbled.  It was childish and dumb, their argument devolving into nothing but tension and adrenaline and maybe, maybe, maybe desire, too. Maybe he did want to punch him with him with his mouth.  
  
"I'm not demanding anything, you dumbass! Stop saying I'm stupid and just fucking listen to me for a second!" he yelled instead, their voices mixing together into angry chaos.  
  
"You _are_ demanding! You're so demanding it's like you think you're the boss of me!" Dean cried.  
  
"Stop being so — so — _god_ , I can't even stand you and your stupid eyes and how you eat food even though you're an angel and they don't need any and — "  
  
And then he was moving forward, jerking Dean closer, and Dean was moving in and their noses bumped together, Dean taking a sharp breath as his lips only just barely brushed against Castiel's.  
  
"You can't even properly warn someone before you kiss them," Dean sputtered, and he managed to get his hands on Castiel's face. Castiel hissed through his teeth and then Dean pressed their lips together more fully, as much emotion in the kiss as there was in his words. Cas let out a low sound that was definitely surprise - not thrill, not pleasure from the feeling of Dean's lips against his own. Not at all.  
  
The kiss was far from soft, all teeth and lips and tongue, and Castiel broke it first, growling a, "Watch your teeth," into Dean's lips.  
  
"Make me," Dean mumbled against Cas' mouth. His hands slid down from Castiel's face to his shoulders, and then down further, going around his back and clutching him closer and closer until they were completely flush.  
  
Castiel tugged on Dean's jacket a second time as he stumbled backwards, tilting his head the other way to catch Dean's lips again, and then he was throwing one of his arms over Dean's shoulder, hooking it around the back of his neck and nowhere in his mind were the questions _is this allowed? do angels feel this stuff?_ because the kiss tasted like electricity and cheap diner food and _Dean_.  
  
And then Dean bit him, a quick bite to his bottom lip, still just as spiteful.

Castiel curled his fingers into the hair at the top of Dean's head, tugging as he roughly turned his head away from the bite; he stumbled until his back hit the wall. Heat filled him, anger crackling under his skin because he _wanted_ so badly - wanted to show Dean how irate he was but how much he liked him for someone he'd just met, wanted to tell him off for being an asshole and show him how much he felt attracted to him anyway.  
  
It was conflicting, to say the least.  
  
"Fuck you," he mumbled back before going in for another kiss, still mostly teeth and tongue, and anyone he kissed had never felt like this before; where it had been just been lips clashing awkwardly at first, here and now it was blazing heat and more. It was anger and _passion_ and it ignited something in him that nothing had in the past.  
  
Pressed so close, their knees bumped together and he could feel Dean's hip rubbing against his own, and he clutched at his jacket more tightly, breathing into Dean's mouth:  
  
"Take that off, take off your stupid jacket before I rip it off your back and burn it."  
  
"You're not burning my jacket," was all Dean said. But he did move a hand up to his shoulder and wrenched off the jacket, first one side and then the other, letting it fall to the floor. Cas could only run his hands up and down Dean's arms, then slide them back up to his shoulders, breathing more heavily than he was expecting at how close their lips were.  
  
They sealed their mouths together again, taking the time to trace lips with tongue and map it all out because suddenly time felt _fleeting_.  
  
Castiel let out a low sound, twining his arms around Dean’s neck again as he deepened the kiss. Dean was pressing him up against the wall, flushing them together. It had melted from anger to something more wanting, with less frustration and more give.  
  
He didn't want to stop, and it was hard to hear the voice of reason over his fast beating heart, over their gasps and soft sounds, but that voice was there, and it was saying this was a bad idea. It was saying this was not the time or the place or even _the person_ , because Dean was in fact an angel, and he was fighting a war.  
  
Castiel wrenched himself away, panting, his forehead bumping against Dean's as his hands flexed in the back of Dean's shirt.  
  
"Dean," he breathed, his eyes finding Dean's, wanting so badly to return to those lips so he could kiss them again, and again, and again. Both panted with their foreheads touching, lips close still. Dean's gaze stayed downcast, looking at Cas' mouth.  
  
Dean only did look up when he heard his name and their eyes locked.  
  
"You're impossible," Dean said as he swallowed and bumped their noses together as if to say _come on, we could, we definitely could._  
  
"We shouldn't," Castiel breathed, and despite what he was saying, he leaned in and brushed his lips against Dean's. He felt his entire body _want_ and leaned forward against Dean. For a moment, he let himself catch Dean’s lips in a soft, open-mouthed kiss, but then Cas could only shake his head, his arms sliding from around Dean's neck to rest his hands at his shoulders.  
  
"We can't," he whispered, his eyes closing as he leaned his forehead against Dean's. This wasn't right, in more ways than one, and for fuck's sake Dean was an _angel_ , and Cas was just human — a prophet under his guard, even — and they were in a war. There was no time for this, for all this slow kissing and touching. There was no time for these kind of vulnerabilities. This was no time for the tribulations that came with apparently wanting in an angel of the lord's pants.  
  
He swallowed hard, his hand sliding to the back of Dean's neck.  
  
"Not now," he said again, low and hushed, and something in his chest twisted hard, wondered if Dean would be hurt or angry with him by this. The pull Cas felt toward him was so magnetic and powerful, stronger than anything he'd felt in a long time, and he was loathe to break it.  
  
But he knew that it was the better thing to do. There was no need to complicate things for either of them, and they were both far more involved with each other than they should be for strangers that had met days before.  
  
Dean finally relented, relaxed against Cas with a little noise of displeasure, pecking the corner of his mouth and ducking down to snag his jacket off the floor.  
  
"Sorry," Dean started, flushed, "but if I stand that close to you much longer I'll start arguing again and this time it'll be about the merits of taking our clothes off."  
  
Dean let the uneasy flash of a smile pass his expression as he stepped back, shrugging his jacket on again, running a hand through his hair and puffing out a breath.  
  
So much for keeping his distance. There was something about Dean, and it had nothing to do with his angelic nature, that Castiel could not resist. Something that made Cas watch his lips as he spoke and itch to reach in and pull him close again.  
  
Instead he watched Dean shrug his jacket back on, nodding. Dean ran a hand through his hair, trying to settle it back down, tugged on his shirt to untwist it, and cleared his throat.  
  
"Maybe some other time, you can tell me all about those merits. A demonstration would be nice," he said with a small smirk. Castiel’s heart was still beating fast, and a heated desire coursed through his veins as he gave Dean space, sliding off the wall to stand in the doorway to the hall. He was sure his cheeks were flushed, betraying how much he had liked that, but it didn't matter — it couldn't happen. Not yet. Maybe not ever, being that Dean was an angel, and had missions and orders, would likely move on from him.  
  
Castiel was, however, truly glad to know he wasn't the only one that felt this _thing_ between them. John was wrong; Dean would not simply leave, and what brought them together was stronger than John's words and attempts to keep it from happening.  
  
"They're good merits," Dean agreed, and ran his tongue over his lips as if in thought — and his eyes glittered with mischief. "A demonstration, yeah? You thinkin' a five-slide powerpoint, or we breaking out a podium in here sometime soon and starting a lecture with visual aid?"  
  
Castiel nodded, his smile flickering briefly before fading. He had too much fun with Dean, and he was too at ease. Surely it couldn’t end well. He cleared his throat, scratching at the stubble of his cheek.  
  
"Something like that. We'll see," he said, before pausing. "You should probably go. Do your angel stuff," he said, even if the last thing he wanted was to send Dean away.  
  
Dean opened his mouth as if to say something, and then closed it quickly. Castiel turned away, about to walk back to his bedroom, before pausing in the doorway.  
  
"And Dean?" His fingers tapped along the wood of the doorframe and his eyes found Dean’s. This wasn't what he wanted, but everything he’d actually chosen to be had been cut away in the past few days, and apparently what he wanted had never mattered in the first place.  
  
Dean stood at attention, looking at him with a mix of curiosity and longing. Castiel wondered if he'd stay, if he asked.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
Castiel swallowed before saying the following words, knowing the impact they could have. His gaze didn't leave Dean's, however, and he clenched his jaw.  
  
"John smelled like sulfur," he said. "When he left. He smelled like sulfur. If that means anything to you," he breathed out, and if his eyes turned pleading that was only because he was sorry, he was, because learning someone you have complete faith in was not who you believed them to be _hurt_ , and it threw you off, and Castiel's entire life had been changed for it.  
  
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and he meant it.  
  
Dean inhaled. Held his breath for a moment, exhaled again.  
  
"Yeah," Dean murmured again, quiet, and gave a jerky nod as he looked at Cas for a few seconds longer. Dean lingered an instant, but Castiel nodded back. There was the rustle of wings, and Dean was gone.


	8. Chapter Eight

Dean started by glancing through personal heavens.  
  
Probably not the most productive idea; John would likely not be lazing around in someone's eternal Sunday church service, or infinite strip mall, or mild summer day. There was a war, as he'd already told Castiel. John was not the idle type. He'd be busy.  
  
Even so, Dean hadn't been back home in a long time. Hundreds of years had gone by with him and himself, simply perching on Earth. He wasn't patient enough to just watch, either, not like every other angel he'd ever been able to ask without getting a look that screamed _you blasphemer_. Dean liked to be in the thick of things, and there had been no better way to accomplish that goal than dropping down with a leave of absence, or at least something that qualified enough as one.  
  
And then the leave of absence turned into an extended stay.  
  
And the extended stay turned into being stationed there.  
  
And now…  
  
Now he had to figure out exactly what navigating his home entailed.  
  
Thankfully, angels weren't too awfully keen on change. None of them liked it. Dean didn't like it himself, but he viewed as less of an angel trait and more of a personality quirk. Strange, how perception shifted to accommodate ideas. Getting to Heaven was as easy as a flap of his wings and a thought pointed in the right direction, but traversing it? Dean hadn't explored the infinite stretch of the realm since before the fucking Great Flood of Noah, just because he didn't feel like getting his feet wet.  
  
"Alright," he breathed as he stood in the middle of a snow-blanketed field that somehow still lacked any chill. Dean puffed out a breath that turned visible in the air and okay, whatever, who was he to question the interdimensional laws of physics? He'd just flown to freakin' Heaven.  
  
He paused for just a moment, looking around the field and settling his gaze on the set of shoeprints leading off into the distance.  
  
"If I were a garrison leader, where would I be?" he mumbled to himself.  
  
"Kind of a weird question, don't you think?"  
  
Dean couldn't help jumping in surprise, accidentally kicking some of the snow into the air in the process. He turned around and red hair, a happy expression, and a sudden armful of fellow angel greeted him.  
  
"Hey!" he said, excitement clear in his tone, as he hugged Charlie back. She tucked her head underneath Dean's chin for what was only a second, pulling back to look him over and dust off the flakes that had drifted onto his jacket - by snowfall or by momentum, Dean wasn't too sure, and he thankfully didn't care.  
  
"You look _really_ out of place," Charlie said with only the slightest hint of shame, and Dean shrugged, snorting.  
  
"Yeah, well," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I haven't exactly been here in a while. There's been plenty of renovations since last time. I feel like I need to be busting out _Now That’s What I Call Christmas_ or something. That Mariah Carey song gets me every time."  
  
Charlie stared at him with an obvious confusion as if she was waiting for an explanation.  
  
"Y'know what, ah. Never mind." Dean moved right on through that Minesweeper of a conversation and continued, pretending not to notice while Charlie made it very apparent that she'd be looking up just who this Mariah Carey was and why she held any relevance to whoever's heaven they were crashing. "You seen John around?"  
  
"Nope," she answered, popping the _-ope_ of the _nope_. "Last I heard, he touched down to go chat business with you and the prophet!"  
  
"Cas?"  
  
"Well, yeah, the numbers are sorta dwindling at this point - you had to have heard. I don't care how busy you are flaunting your dreamy vessel all over Earth, you can't just tune it out, Dean! You have a _responsibility_ ," Charlie chided, and Dean recognized the speech as way too close to the exact same one he'd given her so long ago, over and over.  
  
They grow up so fast.  
  
He started walking aimlessly, making sure to kick as much snow Charlie's way as he could. She took the mature path and didn't fling any snowballs back, though if she had he probably could have managed to start a war, albeit a short one. He had a bigger war to be worried about at the moment, and Dean's heart sank with the thought. After jumping back into the thick of it, Dean itched to do _more_. Staying idle was making him itchy, somehow. Killing Alastair had reminded him of the soldier he'd been so long ago, that still resided underneath his skin — his _grace_ , this wasn't _his_ skin — and Dean ached for the thirst again.  
  
"You wanna talk about it?" Charlie asked. Dean blinked at her.  
  
It.  
  
"You mean Alastair, or —?"  
  
"I mean _Cas_."  
  
"Oh! Oh." _Oh_.  
  
"Yeah, oh," she said and rolled her eyes. "You don't have to, I know there's other stuff you have to be doing. Like finding John, which has to be important. Considering that you actually made the trip up here and all. But, um. You haven't been too easy to contact lately. Word's goin' round that you've actually snagged yourself something out of this whole guardian angel gig."  
  
And Dean automatically felt like shit for ditching her; he wished she could take part in everything too. That said, he wanted to kick whoever's gossiping ass started that rumor — even if it wasn't so much a rumor as it was truth. Who was turning Heaven into some kind of gossip mill, anyway?  
  
Dean also found himself giving into the urge to talk to her, the easy camaraderie they'd always kept up still just as inherent as it had been before Dean actually dropped off of the face of Heaven.  
  
"He's a good man, Charlie," he admitted, scuffing the tip of his shoe into some of the snow. "Even if he's kind of an asshole, y'know."  
  
Dean knew he was here for other things. He knew he needed to be focusing on John and that he needed to find him. Maybe he was putting it off. He really didn't want to find out if John was a traitor, but it was his job. His duty, his responsibility.  
  
Well, surely the responsibility of his that could wait a couple more minutes while he caught up with his friend.  
  
"As if you could ever find someone who isn't an asshole that you actually like," Charlie said, smiling, and Dean came very close to rolling his eyes. He had his mouth open to give a rebuttal, but she went on, cutting him off with a raised brow. "Don't tell me it was out of line because it _so_ wasn't."  
  
Dean thought it a good time to change the subject.  
  
"So, the lingo, you got a good hold on it, huh?"  
  
It was Charlie's turn to suppress the eye roll, but she didn't stop herself from it, instead giving a very exaggerated version of the action.  
  
"You're not the only one who learns from the humans. I came up with Charlie _waaay_ before you came up with Dean. Don't tell me you're losing your memory in your old age." She nudged him with her elbow and Dean shifted to a defensive pose, holding his hands up in surrender.  
  
It was true, they had played human together a long, long time ago. He hadn't forgotten, he had just been searching for another topic to swap to from his obvious infatuation with his charge. He'd watched humans for ages, but he hadn't met one yet that had captured his attention like Cas. Even before speaking, he'd kept an eye on him. Been his guardian angel, as Charlie so kindly put it, and Dean wasn't keen on having that diminished to something cheap. Heaven, the original high school gossip mill, straight out of a television show. The angels that had only been to Earth to snag vessels had no idea how similar it was.  
  
The Snow started falling more heavily, and Dean looked up at the un-cold flakes. Charlie followed his gaze and bumped her shoulder into his, but Dean said nothing, squinting at the clouds. They were heavy with snow waiting to blanket the ground once again, though the cycle would always be complete. This heaven, like every heaven, was atemporal. Time held no constraints over this, but someone found their sanctuary in snow and silence.  
  
"We should go," Dean said, and Charlie nodded her assent.  
  
The next heaven was a large sailboat, drifting in a sea that extended in all directions; Dean was sure to stay unnoticed by the occupant, who stood with the breeze against her back by the main sail. It was windless aside from what tousled the woman’s long hair, and Dean was quiet, absorbing the tranquility that was altogether different from and very much the same as the previous land. This was open serenity; the snowfield was a comfort that smothered any anxiety.  
  
"Is there a pattern here?" Charlie asked quietly.  
  
"No," he lied, and they went on to the next.  


 

* * *

  
  
Knee-deep in wildflowers, they stumbled upon John.  
  
Dean ducked his head; Charlie nodded hers almost immediately after they saw him. He must have been either waiting or looking for Dean as well -which was _not_ something Dean wanted to think about in the wake of John's possible traitorous behavior - to have found them so easily.  
  
"John," Charlie greeted, smiling; still, she moved her elbow until it nudged Dean’s arm as reassurance. A silent question: _what's up with you?_  
  
"Charlie," John replied, but didn't look away from Dean. His voice was gravel in the grating way, like it was scraping against Dean's grace, testing him. Dean stood straight up at attention. Charlie was silent, sizing up the situation, her gaze flicking between Dean and their garrison leader, and when John canted his head to dismiss her, she tensed.  
  
Her hand rested on Dean's shoulder for a brief second and they shared a glance before she was gone with the rush of wings that made the flowers stir in the breeze.  
  
"I visited the prophet today," John started.  
  
"Yeah?" Dean said, giving nothing away, despite the urge to put himself out there and ask for confirmation that John was in no way betraying them or working with demons, and that he remained on their side, especially when they were fighting a war that seemingly had no end.  
  
"Yeah." John was not stiff nor urgent in his stance. Casual. But _forced_ , and it was only Dean's experience at picking out body language over years and years on Earth that allowed him to pinpoint it. "I was in the area, doing some recon work. Thought it wouldn't hurt if I touched base with him, since you've been so keen on close quarters with Castiel recently."  
  
Dean stood completely still.  
  
"Being close provides better protection," Dean said curtly. "In case he's abducted _again_. By someone worse than Alastair."  
  
"There's no one worse than Alastair," came the scathing reply, and Dean had to bite back the apology for speaking in haste. "But you killed him, didn't you?" There was praise in the way John spoke, the slightest hint of it, and Dean yearned for John to go on so he could hear that approval for doing well. But his garrison leader continued, and the prize dangling out there was ripped away. "We could have gotten answers from him."  
  
"I'm sure you can provide some."  
  
John froze, and Dean kept up pretending to be a statue. Pretending to be human, pretending to be a statue, Dean just kept pretending. He hardly knew _what_ he was anymore.  
  
"Why don't you elaborate," John said, words snipped. Rough.  
  
Suddenly, all of Dean's potential information against John seemed useless. Nothing more than shredded paper in a wind, blowing off who-knows-where. None of it was going to make a difference, John being a traitor to them was so incredibly _impossible_ , and here Dean was challenging him just to that.  
  
He was about to balk when he thought about Castiel.  
  
 _I know this is hard, I know how it is to want to believe, so much, but sometimes — sometimes you're wrong._  
  
Dean took a deep breath.  
  
"Have you been talking with... anyone, discussing anything with demons?" Dean asked and his voice was steady enough to almost trick himself into thinking that he had this completely under control.  
  
"Dean," John said, and he sounded _disappointed_. "What's gotten into you? You can't think I'd actually work alongside the enemy," and _that_ , that was it, Dean was of course wrong, how could he have ever thought that John would be a traitor, "or even let them get close enough to speak with me."  
  
"Right," Dean mumbled.  
  
"Who'd even put an idea like that in your head? You sound like _you_ were the one under Alastair's care."  
  
John had a point. After all, Alastair was good at torture. Messing with someone's mind was just as effective as their body sometimes.  
  
"Castiel was probably brainwashed by him anyhow; taking anything he says to heart is a stairway to hell," John kept going, and Dean's thought process screeched to a halt. "There's hardly any chance he'll survive this as it is, he's such a frail human... they’re our Father’s greatest creations, but they break so easy.”  
  
"Frail," Dean repeated, voice cold like the snow that had been crunched underfoot so many heavens ago. "He was tortured at the hand of the Grand Inquisitor of Hell, and you're calling him _frail?_ "  
  
It was out of line and Dean knew it as soon as the criticism left his mouth, but he couldn't stop the words from escaping despite being aware of all the repercussions that could fall on his head. He stood his ground with a determination made all the more impressive by the obedience he'd exemplified in the eons before now; his foundations were slipping away as easily as his patience had before as he'd spoken with Castiel. This was too important.  
  
"Isn't he?" John said, and Dean knew the way he said it meant Dean was treading on ice that could shatter too easily with the slightest misstep. "If he had known the location of the tablet, you don't think he would have given it up hoping he'd be saved in return?"  
  
Castiel was _his charge,_ how _dare_ John — Dean surprised even himself with the fire that refused to be stifled in his chest, the burn of refusal that came with John's words. Before Dean could vocally defend Castiel and tell John just how _wrong_ he was and how much Castiel deserved saving, Charlie reappeared with a determined set to her jaw and a firm tone.  
  
"John, I have to speak with you," she said quickly, and a flick of her fingers in Dean's direction was clearly meant to indicate _leave now, I’ve got you covered_. Dean hardly wanted to leave — he was furious — but he took one look at John and the flames burning behind the punishing gaze and Dean steeled himself.  
  
A moment later, Dean had vanished, the flower stems shivering in the wake of his wings the only sign he’d ever been there.


	9. Chapter Nine

Still reeling from his last encounter with Dean, Castiel decided a shower would clear his mind. A cold one, preferably, so he could stop thinking about Dean's fingers on his face, his lips on his own, his taste and the warmth of his body pressed flush against Castiel’s. It turned out thinking about not wanting to think about these things was in fact... well, _thinking about them_ , but the cold water did its job and he came out refreshed, if a little distracted.  
  
Mostly he hoped Dean's talk with John was going well. He wanted to know the outcome, and honestly, he wanted Dean to come back here and tell him about it so they could figure out what the next step was. Not bothering to wrap himself in a towel, he left the bathroom as he ran fingers furiously through his wet hair. His feet padded on the cold floor and as he walked by the living room, he thought he saw a shape out of the corner of his eyes.  
  
He stopped, squinting, and looked again.  
  
"Hello," Sam said with a smile.  
  
"Holy _s --_!" Cas yelped, before throwing himself into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. Great, this day was just getting better and better. Whoever as in his living room meant well, which reduced the list to a short one.  
  
After Dean and John's visiting habits, Castiel could only assume he was part of their garrison.  
  
He dressed in a hurry, putting on a pair of jeans and a worn graphic tee, cursing under his breath the entire time. Stupid angels and their stupid lack of inhibition and most importantly _common sense_.  
  
He stomped out of his room, to the living room where Sam was looking apologetic and too big in his apartment.  
  
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…" he trailed off, before straightening up. "I'm Sam. Dean's brother."  
  
"This is why we have doors!" Cas snapped at him before sitting down on the couch hard, as if the piece of furniture itself deserved it. "I suggest you start using them, or one of you is going to give me a heart attack," he muttered. Sam gave him an apologetic smile, shrugging.  
  
"Dean told me to keep an eye on you, and I want to know what the fuss is all about, so I thought why not introduce myself properly?"  
  
"I wouldn't say taking a seat on my couch while I'm in the shower and waiting for me to get out while unclothed is introducing yourself properly, but nice try," Cas said with a sigh.  
  
"I'm Sam," the angel said, holding out his hand. Castiel looked down at it with a raised eyebrow, impressed. At least he was one-for-two in proper manners so far, and getting better.  
  
"Castiel." He shook Sam's hand, and then narrowed his eyes again. "Next time use the door. And knock."  
  
Sam laughed softly, a weird sight in his oversized body. He looked too big on the couch, like he barely knew what to do with his own limbs.  
  
"You dropped this somewhere," Sam said, handing Castiel his phone. He hadn't noticed its disappearance, which said something about how preoccupied and crazed he’d gotten.  
  
"Oh. Thank you," he said, blinking as he reached for it.  
  
 _8 missed calls_ , _12 new text messages_.  
  
"That's what happens when you skip work and your volunteering shift," Cas mumbled under his breath. His work had called, and so had the shelter where he was volunteering. Then there were texts from Anna, asking him about the date and growing increasingly worried. Her last text read:  
  
 _IF THAT FUCKER ACTUALLY MURDERED YOU I WILL DESTROY HIM_.  
  
Oops. He grimaced, glanced at Sam.  
  
"Do you mind if I...?" he gestured with his phone and Sam shook his head.  
  
"No, go ahead."  
  
He texted Anna a quick message, along the lines of _I'm okay, long story, I'll call you soon_.  
  
He gets an immediate response:  
  
 _u are the worst. I was abt to call the police._  
  
 _I'll make it up to you. promise._  
  
 _yeah ok. call me when u can, and he better be worth it_  
  
He decided that was enough, not wanting to linger on the last part of her response. After that, he called Hester and Rachel, the women he volunteered with at the shelter. He apologized to them, said he'd had an emergency. He did the same for work, leaving Naomi a voice mail and hoping that his impeccable track record so far would save him his job.  
  
"So you volunteer?" Sam asked when he was done. The battery of his phone was nearly drained, but so was he, so hunting his charger down would have to wait. He put it down for now, sitting back on his couch.  
  
"Yes. There are a few homeless shelters in the neighborhood, and I go around wherever I'm needed."  
  
"That's good of you."  
  
Castiel shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. He had never been good at talking about this, and in fact preferred to keep it to himself. He didn't do it to boast, or for praise. People's reactions tended to turn him into a pariah for daring to give some of his time to the needy, which was something that angered him.  
  
"It's nothing, really. My parents' death made me realize God isn't here to help us, and that we’re the only ones who can help ourselves," Cas answered. "I was right, apparently," he said with a tight smile.  
  
"I'm glad you found something that fulfills you, Castiel," Sam said, avoiding the topic of God entirely, as he had expected. "You are one reason to have faith in humanity, which we've been asked to do in our Father's absence," he continued, and Cas raised his eyebrows.  
  
"You mean God left and asked you to have faith in us?"  
  
"I mean, that was part of the plan, when he created you. We are meant to love you more than him," he explained. "To praise you, protect you, keep Heaven safe for you when you reach it."  
  
"I see." Cas said, shrugging. "I'm sure not every angel was okay with that. We're far from perfect," he said, and Sam laughed again.  
  
"I think that's part of the challenge. God doesn't make things easy for anyone," Sam said, and Cas dropped his head back onto the couch.  
  
"Tell me about it. Good to know he's a dick to you as well," Cas snorted, straightening up to lean his elbows on his knees. He paused, his mind lost in thoughts of of angels and God and Heaven and life and death, and Dean and Sam and his parents too. There was so much he wanted to know, so little he could wrap his mind around.  
  
"I wouldn't say he's a dick," Sam said, and Cas ducked his head.  
  
"Yeah, of course not. You've been taught not to," Cas said, and maybe he was trying to be provocative again. "There's a lot about humanity you don't understand."  
  
"I know." Sam looked down then, and his tone was filled with regret. "We...I used to look down on humanity. But Dean, he...he spent a lot of time down here, and he talked about you guys like you were a treasure. I got curious and I came down here for a while, and you're right. There's so much we miss up there. So much we don't see, so much we think doesn't matter at all."  
  
Cas remained silent, Sam's words sinking in. Somehow he was not surprised that Dean's love of humanity had bled into the ones close to him; he had such enthusiasm and clear joy for the things that he loved. That was what had originally drawn him to Dean, after all. Funny that he was an angel, because he was so thrilled to be _alive_.  
  
Cas stopped his thoughts short, not wanting to get flustered in front of Sam at the thought of his angel brother. But Dean’s smile and joy and the radiating _love_ of simple things that had come from him had been contagious.  
  
No wonder Sam had rethought his opinion of humanity.  
  
"There's much we differ in, but in a lot of ways we're the same," Sam said, and Cas nodded. He would not have believed that after his impression of John or Sam, but with Dean, he could very clearly. Thoughts of Dean reminded him of earlier, and his eyes fell to the wall he'd been pressed against with Dean's arms around him and his lips on his own.  
  
"How? How are we the same, how are we different?" Cas asked, trying to think of a subtle way to ask what he really wanted to know. Did Dean care? Could he care? Could he _want_ like humans did?  
  
Could they, maybe, love beyond the love their Father dictated of them? Castiel's own thoughts made him wince, remembering the time his own love for God was warm and big and expanding and he saw it everywhere - in the grass, in the sky, in the air, in animals, even in people. At the time, he had believed nothing to be purer and grander than the love of and from God.  
  
Some days he missed it terribly.  
  
"You're not asking out of just curiosity, are you?" Sam asked, scrutinizing Cas, making him feel exposed, suddenly. That seemed to be an angel thing; they’d look at you and you’d feel like they knew all about you with one simple glance, your soul bare before them.  
  
"I don't know what you're implying." At Castiel’s response, Sam scoffed, shook his head and sighed.  
  
"I was expecting this sooner or later," he said under his breath. Castiel ignored the possible dig. "Look, technically speaking, angels aren't meant to interfere in human business. Our work is to observe. We love, but we do it from a distance. Some angels are given a charge, and you have been Dean's for a while now."  
  
That brought a renewed slew of questions to Castiel's mind. What did being someone's charge entail? How long ago had Dean been assigned to him? How much longer would he be his charge? As soon as Castiel opened his mouth, though, Sam raised a hand to stop him.  
  
"An angel can be reassigned at any given moment, if his superiors think he is needed elsewhere, or if he is getting too involved," Sam explained, just as Castiel felt alarms start blaring inside his head. He was certain making out against the wall qualified as _too involved_. "You...have been Dean's charge for a while, and I think when this blows over Heaven will find someone new for him to watch over," Sam said. All Castiel could do was clench his jaw and nod sharply. That concurred with what John had implied, but that didn't mean that Dean had to like it, right?  
  
Right?  
  
"I understand," he said, getting up to pace, to move, to do _something_. Sitting there and moping was no use, and who did he think he was, wanting an angel to stick around?  
  
"Okay, good. I don't think for one second Dean will accept to be reassigned, but believe me, Heaven will try," Sam said, and Castiel relaxed. That was good to hear, yeah, something positive to focus on. Dean wouldn't _want_ to. But -  
  
"Will he have a choice?" Castiel asked, and Sam squared his shoulders and looked away, the cheer gone from him.  
  
"That's another thing entirely," he said, before pausing and then turning pleading eyes to Castiel. "Castiel, I gotta say... This is a bad idea. Whatever it is you and Dean feel for each other, this is going to hurt. It's going to destroy either one or both of you. But I have never... not in millions of years, and I mean that very literally, seen Dean as happy as he is when he talks about you, or when he’s been with you."  
  
Castiel had to take a deep breath and let that sink in. Dean _liked_ spending time with him, beyond Castiel being Dean’s charge or mission, and if his closest brother could see how much happiness it brought him, it meant something. It meant a lot.  
  
Dragging his hands through his hair, Castiel let himself release a slow breath. The news felt great, yes, but there was surely no way this could end well. Still, he stifled his fear that after this he might never be able to see Dean again — and give Sam a lopsided smirk.  
  
"Are you giving me your blessing?" he said, raising an eyebrow.  Sam rolled his eyes, and Cas wondered if he'd learned that from Dean.  
  
"Something like that. Just give him time, okay? He'll find his way to you through hell or high water." Castiel's heart hammered briefly in his chest at that, and he cleared his throat before his blush became too evident.  
  
"I hope so. He's kind of the best kisser I've ever encountered," he muttered, and Sam spluttered and yelped.  
  
"I did not need to know that!" He grimaced, and Cas chuckled and wished Dean had been there to see this. Just then, his phone vibrated and he practically dove for it, hoping against hope that it was the angel himself keeping him updated on the John thing.  
  
It wasn't; it was Meg.  
  
 _hey i'm downstairs. let me in_  
  
Castiel wasn't sure how she had gotten her hands on his number, but he got up regardless.  
  
"It's Meg," he said, and Sam got up to buzz her in. They heard the heels of her boots up the stairs, and then she was knocking at the door.  
  
"Hey," she said, breathless, as soon as the door opened. She swept inside, her hair nearly whipping in Castiel's face. "We have a problem."  
  
"I couldn't tell," Cas squinted at her, while Sam showed much more concern.  
  
"What's wrong? What happened?"  
  
"Eight people have gone missing in the last twenty-four hours. All from this neighborhood," she said, shoving her hand into her leather jacket to pull out rumpled, folded pieces of paper. "Reports say the people just vanished. Their family or friends were with them and they looked away for a second and poof, gone. Like fucking wizards disapparating."  
  
Cas frowned, taking one of the police reports she had somehow gotten her hands on. He didn't know the face nor the name, but the woman had soft, kind brown eyes. His gut twisted at the thought of harm coming to her.  
  
"My boss Crowley managed to get me your number, Cas, but I would've climbed in through the window or something if he couldn’t. Shit hit the fan. I think one of your demon pals got hungry and kidnapped them," she said, and Sam nodded, pointing at the report he held in his hands.  
  
"Look at this: strong unpleasant smell left behind. Sounds like sulfur," he said, and Meg nodded.  
  
"Yep. I've already got a lead, but I need back-up. There's some kind of massive congregation of monsters in the neighboring town, and all the hunters there are busy." She raised her eyebrows, pursing her lips. "I think it's a trap."

 

* * *

 

 

"He shut me out. I can't get to Dean," Sam calls as Castiel hunches over his laptop, Meg over her shoulder. Crowley — some kind of go-to hunter with years of experience and a frankly frightening bank of knowledge - called them minutes ago  with an address. The demons are in the sewers, and the nearest access point is from the basement of an old paper factory.  
  
"We'll get to that in a minute," Meg replied, although Dean had suddenly jolted to the forefront of Castiel's mind again. What if John had gotten to him? What if Castiel’s suspicions been right, and now John had made Dean pay for his knowledge?  
  
"Hey, prophet, snap out of it. A lot of people are going to die if we don't do this right," Meg said, snapping her fingers in front of Castiel's eyes. He momentarily went crossed eyed, then grunted and looked away.  
  
"Doing the best I can," he said, although adrenaline was pumping through his veins and complicating everything. This much activity after a rather simple and routinely life was throwing his entire body off, the fragile balance of his personal ecosystem in shambles.  
  
"Yeah, well, get your mind off your angel for a second, might help you be more productive," she grumbled, and Cas glared at her.  
  
"If that's a veiled criticism, I won't hear it and I won't respond to it," he said, returning to the computer screen. Meg rested her hand on the back of his chair and leaned over, watching.  
  
"Not really what I was getting at, but then maybe I'm wrong. In which case," her hand moved to the top of Castiel's back, and her thumb rubbed there. "I'm thinking I take you out sometime. You could be my pizza delivery man," she said, her lips too close to Castiel's ear for comfort. He cleared his throat and leaned forward, away from her. Meg was pretty, he couldn't deny that, and kinda fun too, but she was not...Castiel couldn't think of a reason why he was far from interested other than _she wasn't_.  
  
"God, he's really gotten to you, hasn't he," she said, rolling her eyes and turning away. "Yo, angel, any luck yet?"  
  
Sam shook his head, desolate.  
  
"I could just go check," he said, but Meg shook her head.  
  
"I'm with Cas on the John thing. If he has anything to do with this, going up there is the last thing you should do."  
  
Sam's face was grim, but he didn't argue. It was hard to, even without solid proof. Castiel's instincts that had his mother so proud were more than just that, after all.  
  
"Then what can I do?" He asked, and Meg smirked slowly as she curled her finger at him in a _come here_ motion.  
  
It turned out Sam was useless. He had no grasp of technology and couldn't work a GPS to save his life. Meg had sent him to the kitchen to make them coffee, but that had ended with a small fire that he had to put out with his own powers. Either way, a disaster. They concluded there was nothing else to do but sit Sam down, shove a bible in his hands, and do their thing while he waited.  
  
Thankfully, Dean arrived soon after.  
  
"Dean!" Sam and Castiel said as they got to their feet simultaneously. He frowned at their state, looking over to see Meg, causing his frown to deepen further.  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
"Now this I can do," Sam muttered as he grabbed Dean's arm and sat him down on the couch. He explained everything to Dean while Meg and Castiel worked together. Meg's phone kept ringing, from Crowley, to other hunters nearby, to people from the police force in the know and sending them their tips. Seemed like the people had not quite been abducted, but rather had _up and left_ after some strange behavior.  
  
Once Castiel and Meg had the information they needed, they shared it with the others, and the four of them sat down to try and think up of a plan. Tensions were high, everyone on edge, knowing lives were at risk, the future of humanity at stake.  
  
"Sam and I will go," Dean said.  
  
"Me too," Meg said, snapping _what?_ at the look Dean gave her. "I've got some beef with these guys."  
  
"Fine," Sam says, and Dean's mouth opened to retort, glowering at Sam.  
  
"Me too," Castiel piped up.  
  
"No." There was no hesitation, Dean's voice harsh and cold. Castiel glared at him, having already made up his mind. He had not been kidnapped and dragged into their war to be left in the sidelines. Dean was an asshole if he thought that was in any way okay. First refusing to trust him and give his doubts any stock, and now this?  
  
"I'm coming," he said, his eyes locking with Dean's. They glared at each other until Sam cleared his throat, and they both turned to him.  
  
"What?!" They snapped. He leaned away from them, grimacing.  
  
"Do you two wish to, uh, discuss it? In private?" Dean clenched his jaw, and Meg snickered as she watched the scene unfold. Sam was giving Dean a look, and Cas wondered if telepathy was an angel thing, because it looked like they were having an entire conversation,  if Dean's expressive responses were anything to go by.  
  
"This isn't funny, Meg," Cas said, but she only grinned wider.  
  
"Then we have a very different sense of humor," she said, her eyebrow quirking up.  
  
"Dean," Cas said, snapping his attention back to him. "My room?" He tilted his head in the direction of the hall. He wasn't about to back down, and Dean knew him well enough to know this by now, but still Dean nodded and stood.  
  
Sam and Meg watched them, Sam awkwardly, Meg amused, and then they disappeared behind the wall and the door to his bedroom was in sight.  
  
"Cas, wait," Dean said, grabbing his arm to pull him back. He stopped, tensed, and then whipped around to face him.  
  
"Whatever reason you may think you have, I don't want to hear it. I'm coming with you, and we are going to save these people and stop the demons, and that's all there is to it," he said in a hurried, angry whisper. Dean's eyes widened momentarily, but then he scowled and hissed through his teeth.  
  
"I can't let you come with us. You're a prophet, or going to be some day, and us taking you there is us risking your life, which I won't do."  
  
And there it was, Dean's more irritating side: the side that thought it was his _job_ to keep Castiel safe, like Castiel had asked for all this in the first place. He had his own reasons to want to be there and save these people but also, maybe, help destroy a few demons.  
  
They'd taken his parents from him, after all.  
  
"This has nothing to do with you. My life isn't your responsibility, Dean, it's my own. I choose to go with you, and I'm aware of the risks, but you can't save everyone, my friend." Castiel noticed how close they were standing, toe to toe. Personal space seemed to mean little to angels, and Castiel usually so distant found himself okay with it.  
  
He thought of Dean's lips on his own earlier, and his eyes fell to them, pink and parted and full. Then Dean spoke, jerking him from his thoughts.  
  
"Cas, please. I just wanna keep you safe," he said, looking like this pained him, his voice low, brow furrowed. Castiel swallowed and clenched his fists to keep himself from reaching out and touching Dean, but eventually the temptation was too strong and his hand came to rest against Dean's cheek. His thumb stroked the stubble it met there and he sighed, shaking his head lightly. Dean turned his face into Castiel's hand, his eyes closed, looking like he'd been starved for this, for affection and touch; maybe he had been, maybe the kiss earlier had meant as much to him as it had to Castiel.  
  
This was a dangerous line of thought, a useless one. Still, he felt Dean's hand come to rest at his waist, heavy with unspoken words and the weight of how much they _shouldn't_ be doing this.  
  
"I am safe," Castiel breathed. "I'm coming with you, Dean. You'll have to tie me up to get me to stay behind," he teased, a small smile quirking his lips upwards.  
  
"That could be arranged," Dean muttered, smirking in turn. His hand found Castiel's on his cheek and gently pulled it down, giving it a squeeze. "Don't do anything stupid," he said, and his forehead pressed forward to rest against Castiel's. He closed his eyes, Castiel's own tracing the features of Dean's face.  
  
"Look who's talking," Castiel whispered, their lips so close; and Dean's breath was on Castiel’s skin but this couldn't and shouldn't happen, so Castiel closed his eyes and then took a step back, letting Dean's hand go. "I can take care of myself. I'll be fine," he added, pleased to note the brief frown on Dean's face at their sudden lack of physical proximity. A sign that Dean wanted this too was all it took to make Cas feel warm and shivery all over.  
  
"Cas, look, if something happens to you —"  
  
"Nothing will happen to me," he said. Dean sighed and nodded his agreement. Good, because Cas didn't want to fight his way into the group His mind was made up, and he wanted to see the downfall of the demons not only for the sake of his parents, but also for the other prophets, the ones tortured and thrown aside.  
  
Their faces were grim as they got ready. Meg showed Castiel how to load a gun and handed him hers. She took a sawed off shot gun for herself from her car, and a can of paint for devil's traps. Sam and Dean were talking in hushed tones together, either planning strategy or saying goodbyes or wishing luck, who knew. It wasn't Castiel’s conversation to interrupt.  
  
The drive over was tense. Dean had refused to fly them there, excusing his refusal by expressing his concern that it would be exactly what the demons wanted, and had made Castiel hitch a ride with Meg while he and Sam made their own way there. All Castiel could think about as the car took the twists and turns of the streets was the last faded memory of his parents, and the nightmares and visions that had become part of his reality, too.  
  
"They'll be fine," Meg said, and Castiel didn't know if she meant their angel friends or the missing people.  
  
It didn't seem to matter.  
  
They parked the car a few streets down, and walked in silence to the sewage grates that bled into a grimy river under an even grimier bridge. Castiel's nose wrinkled at the smell as they walked, hunched forward, their hands grasping blindly in the gloom for some kind of steadying surface. The ground beneath their feet was trash and pebbles and rivulets of dark brown water slipping between their legs.  
  
Castiel jumped when shadows moved toward them, and his grip on the handgun fit snug against his palm tightened. The shapes defined themselves with proximity and he realized it was Sam and Dean, walking toward them.  
  
They pointed to a grate on the inside of the bridge, one that was leaking running water that looked thick and smelled pungent. Lovely. Barely a week gone by and he had seen and done more than he'd ever wished to.  
  
One look at Dean chased those thoughts away. He was looking at him like he'd hung the moon, and he took a step to stand closer. Neither Meg nor Sam noticed, and neither said anything when he reached for Dean's hand and gave it a squeeze.  
  
 _I'm fine_.  
  
Dean looked at him, nodding.  
  
 _Good. Let me know…_  
  
Sam unscrewed the gate with his grace, and then they slipped.  
  
It was, effectively, a trap. The sewers were a maze more complex than Castiel could wrap his mind around, and the demons had traced sigils along the tunnels that prohibited Dean and Sam to find their way.  
  
"That's why we have things called maps," Meg said, pulling one from her jacket. Castiel shone his flashlight on it and they pored over the dizzying number of twists and turns, fingers tracing patterns. There was no real way to know which way the demons had gone, but logic dictated that they would wait where tunnels and pipes met to spill their waste into bigger plumbing works.  
  
They followed Castiel's idea and by the time they'd trailblazed almost the entirety of the sewers, he was covered in dirt, sewage waste and plenty of other things he did not want to think about. Dean had a streak of mud on his cheek, and kept throwing worried glances between Sam and Castiel.  
  
Meg was leading them, and she lifted a hand to still them. Water sloshed at their feet, and Castiel told himself _not_ to flash his light down there and take a look. He could feel it in his shoes. He shuddered, and Meg whispered.  
  
"Round the corner."  
  
"What if they're not there?" Sam asked.  
  
"They'll be there."  
  
The three of them turned to Castiel, who opened his eyes and frowned. He hadn't been thinking that, not at all, his mouth had spoken out of its own accord, but he knew as soon as the words had been let out that they rang true.  
  
The demons would be here.  
  
Castiel raised the gun still clasped tight in his hand as they took careful steps around the corner. His fingers were sore around the trigger, and he uncurled them one by one to try and get the blood back in them. Stiff fingers would likely not be very helpful in a shooting.  
  
Not that guns would do much against demons in the first place.  
  
There was someone waiting for them, a man standing in the center of a high ceilinged circular room. Pipes and grates were releasing water into trenches that lined the sides of the floor, in trickles or loud gushes that echoed through the metallic surfaces of the plumbing. One large grill of metal allowed moonlight to pour down into the center of the room, lighting the doubtless ringleader like a spotlight. It would have been impressive, if one didn't know its use.  
  
"Finally," the man said, lifting his arms up and sweeping them open in an arc. His eyes shone a murky yellow that brightened considerably when they flashed in the shafts of light that leaked through the underground. "I've been waiting." There was a loud crackling, and then the room was full of the missing people, their eyes as black as pits, as dark as coal.  
  
"Azazel," Dean breathed from somewhere to Castiel's side.  
  
A beat later, the demons attacked. They were fast, too fast for Castiel to shoot them, and he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger anyway; he was too afraid that the bullets would harm his friends or even kill one of the possessed missing people. A flurry of movement and yells and shouts hit his ears but he could make no sense of it. Castiel felt himself grabbed, tugged, and then pulled in the other direction.  
  
"Cas! Castiel!" He heard Dean call his name, and he reached out blindly.  
  
"Dean! I'm over here!" he called, but there was a grunt and a sharp smell, and suddenly the gloom was lit by fire. There was a circle of it on the floor of the sewer area, and Sam and Dean were trapped inside. His arm was bent back, held behind him, and there was someone breathing hot and disgusting against the back of his neck. He struggled, but his captor held on tight and _twisted_ , and the pain in Castiel’s shoulder made him stop.  
  
Instead he tried to get Dean's attention, but Dean's eyes were locked on Azazel’s, and Castiel was terrified. Dean seemed to swell up, his hands loose at his sides. His eyes began to glow as he glared, jaw clenched tight. Sam was at his side, putting a hand on his shoulder and saying something softly to him. It had no effect.  
  
"Let him go," Dean hissed, and wide shapes spanned behind him, distorted against the round walls of the connection area. It was his wings, shadow and air, extending behind him in a gesture that was nothing less than an extreme threat. And threatening it was, even more so as Dean's blade fell from his jacket sleeve and into the palm of his hand. "If you hurt one hair on his head, I will make sure you rot in the darkest forest of purgatory," he growled.  
  
Castiel felt like had been punched in the stomach as he thought, as his realized: he'd never felt the way he felt about Dean before, for anyone.  
  
The floor of his well-constructed world tilted and shifted until he almost slipped. It should have been strange for Castiel to realize this now, as Dean radiated anger and harmful intent. But it wasn’t only what was happening right now that made Castiel feel this way, no; rather, it was something that had been nagging at Cas since they met. Castiel had lived years through foggy glass, had kid himself that the life he led was living enough. Dean, however, had turned that around. He was everything Castiel was not, he was faith in humanity and God, he was belief itself, and Castiel loved the way he looked when he was mad just as much as he loved the way he looked when he grinned at him over the pages of an issue of _Cosmo_.  
  
"I'm okay," he said, but Dean didn't hear, or chose not to respond. Meg seemed to have vanished, and Azazel stepped forward. The smirk on his face was the slimiest thing Castiel had ever had the displeasure to lay his eyes on. A surge of violence came from deep within him and he snarled, struggled against the man holding him. Another demon came to join him as reinforcement, both of them twisting his arms behind his back. Castiel could only watch as Azazel stepped forth, until the flames of the fire kissed the tip of his shoes.  
  
"I did not expect you two to just come strolling in here like that," he said, shaking his head. "Almost too easy. Did you all forget about this angel fire thing? Should've planned this out better," he said, disdain apparent in his body language.  
  
"We are not afraid of you," Sam said, taking place next to Dean, standing tall. His eyes didn't need to glower to be threatening.  
  
"Of course you aren't, you're angels. You think you're all powerful. Makes sense, considering who taught you everything you know."  
  
"Don't you dare," Dean growled. Castiel felt bile rise at the back of his throat, his mind straining for a solution, an escape. He had no idea where Meg had gone, and the demons' grip on his arm was tight and painful. The hunters would be coming in for back-up, but he was loathe to sit and wait and risk harm coming to his friends.  
  
"Maybe you wouldn't act like a mindless little pawn if you knew the shit your boss had been up to," Azazel grit out, and the air around them rippled due to the demons surrounding them tensing up.  
  
"Don't speak of John as if you know him," Sam bristled. Castiel had never seen him angry before, and where there'd been all-encompassing warmth before, now there was steely cold, a reminder of John's own.  
  
Azazel laughed. Dean blinked, startled, and then his expression hardened.  
  
"What the fuck is so funny?" he hissed, and Azazel's laughter died down to a sigh as he shook his head.  
  
"Tsk tsk tsk, boys. I fear I know your leader on a whole other level than you do," he said, and Castiel felt the dread of his doubts being confirmed. John _had_ been working with the demons, and despite not being surprised Castiel still felt a pang for Dean, for Sam, who had so fully believed in their garrison leader. "Did you know, for instance, that he was _in love_?"  
  
The way he spat the words with such disgust and mockery made Castiel want to punch his face in. Azazel's eyes fell to Dean and he looked at him with a ghost of a smirk; Castiel wanted to _rip_ it off. Dean faltered, while Sam looked to him for some sort of confirmation, and then Azazel laughed again.  
  
"I guess not. But I'm sure you understand, Dean, don't you? They can be hard to resist, those little humans, so weak and flawed," Azazel taunted, and his gaze fell on Castiel this time, eyes yellow and glowing.  
  
"Shut up," Castiel snarled, and Azazel jumped, exaggerating. It was almost comical, and he looked amused by his own antics.  
  
"Oooh, he bites! I like him."  
  
"Don't," Dean warned, and Azazel rolled his eyes.  
  
"Alright, Dean, we know. Blah blah, don't touch my prophet or I kill you. Whatever," he hissed, and his voice hardened until there was anger lining his every word. "Your _leader_ has had enough fun with us, and since you know nothing, maybe shortening his roster of soldiers will get him to cooperate," he said, raising his eyebrows, and Castiel felt _no_ all over his body, like a physical thing, as Azazel walked closer to the ring of fire surrounding Dean and Sam.  
  
Castiel tried to struggle again, or think of one last desperate plan, but he felt breathing down his neck and a back pressing against his own and shuddered.  
  
"Stop!" he cried out instead, and Azazel swiveled to face him. "Stop, wait," he said, straining against the hands pinning his wrists to his lower back. "Take me instead. You take souls, don't you? You can have mine," he breathed, and if his voice shook it wasn't out of fear.. Far from it. It was rage, hatred, disgust. This man, or his kind, had taken his parents from him. His father's warm hands, his mother's soft smile, their kisses on his forehead as they tucked him in and wished him good night.  
  
He was not going to stand there and let the demons take anyone else away from him.  
  
Castiel pointedly avoided looking at Dean. He kept his gaze fixed on Azazel, who smiled slowly, and then cackled.  
  
"No! Don't touch him," Dean said, and he took a step forward before flinching as flames brushed along his legs. Azazel held out a hand to shove him back, and Castiel watched as Dean's hands flew to his neck, clutching invisible hands, his feet dangling in the air.  
  
Their eyes met, and while he read fear and pain and anger in Dean's eyes there was a steely resolve, a soldier's determination. Castiel was the one to back down, to avert his gaze, to look elsewhere.  
  
"This isn't about you, Dean," Azazel said before dropping his hand. Dean fell to the floor and Sam rushed to him, but Castiel was distracted as Azazel sauntered over to him. The look in his yellow eyes told Castiel that he'd been foolish, and that Azazel would kill them all regardless, even if he traded his soul. It wasn't enough, because it was John Azazel wanted to hurt.  
  
"A prophet's soul? Ah, but not quite, you're not there yet, are you?" he said, watching Castiel closely, scrutinizing. "Might be worth something," he muttered, and as Azazel's fingers tipped his chin up, there was a shout from one of the demons.  
  
Thunder echoed and the building shook. A sudden gust of strong wind caused Castiel to close his eyes and duck his head, dust and debris flying around them in a loud near-windstorm. When he opened them, John was standing in the center of the room, and Azazel, had turned to face him. John was standing tall, and all the steel and coldness that he had shown to Castiel in his kitchen was there tenfold.

 

"Azazel," John said, and the shadows of his wings were wider than any Castiel had ever seen, bigger and longer than Dean's or Sam's.  
  
"Ah, the guest of honor. Fashionably late," Azazel practically cooed as he paced a circle around John, watching him, his yellow eyes shining in the gloom. "Now that all the key elements are here, time for a little explanation."  
  
"Let them go," John said, and his eyes were so bright that Castiel could not look at his face. He found Dean's instead, and the worry and anger he saw there made his stomach flip.  
  
"They have nothing to do with this," John added. Azazel tipped his head back and _laughed_ , so hard and so long that the other demons joined him. The cacophony of wretched laughter sent chills of disgust down Castiel's spine.  
  
"That's funny, you giving us orders," Azazel said.  
  
"We had an agreement," John hissed, and his sword was not drawn but Castiel felt the thrum of his strength in the air. Castiel’s eyes fell to Dean's again, who was now frowning at John, deflating as the darkened image of his wings faded behind him.  
  
"Yeah? Well, perhaps we can keep things in order if you show us the demon tablet," Azazel teased, smiling a smile that was empty of everything, a void.  
  
A discomfort seemed to ripple through John.  
  
Azazel was _angry_ , not just staging some kind of subordination.  
  
"I can't do that," John said, shaking his head. Azazel's smile widened, practically splitting his face, the firelight dancing across it making it look like it was caving inside of itself. Sam was holding Dean back, and Dean was trying to shake him off.  
  
"Are you working with him?!" Dean yelled, and John glanced at him before returning his gaze to Azazel. Castiel saw Dean flinch and shove at Sam, and it took everything in his power not to say anything. All Castiel could do was struggle, trying to lurch forward to unsettle them, but it only caused his shoulder to pop and for immense pain to swarm all over his side, all the way up to his jaw. He couldn't help letting out a cry, eyes squeezed shut. The demon snickered against his ear and then kicked his legs out from under him; Castiel fell to his knees, arms still trapped behind his back and the pain filling his eyes with tears.  
  
"Ah, he thought he was," Azazel said, smirking again, as if Castiel's pain was nothing. "But John is a liar, John is a manipulator, and he does not have the demon tablet as he promised us," Azazel explained. "And so, we took a few precautions."  
  
Castiel jerked as John stood up straight; it was like he was _growing_ , somehow, expanding out of himself. He made the rest of the already cramped space seem smaller, more crowded, and Dean watched in awe as his garrison leader showcased the true size of his wings, glorious and terrifying. The air crackled again with that same static, angelic and tingling along Castiel's skin.  
  
"I hope, for your own sake, that you have not touched a hair on her head," John hissed, and the words echoed in Castiel's mind like words he'd heard before.  
  
"Actually, she's six feet under as of a few hours ago," Azazel said, casually glancing at a watch on his wrist. "So you can say goodbye to your sweet little Mary, but I made sure she had a spot over the hottest flames of hell for you."  
  
There was no describing what happened next.  
  
There was noise and chaos and screaming, there were bright lights and bodies hitting the ground; there was the smell of blood and hands releasing Castiel as he stumbled back and fell to the ground, sprawling over the now inert body of one of his captors.  
  
He crawled away from the light, blinding and warm against his back, shielding his face. He crawled until his fingers found the neck of the body below him and sought out a pulse. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, and Castiel felt his heart clench that another soul had died in this stupid squabble. A stupid squabble that was apparently nothing but the selfish desires of a man.  
  
How strangely human.  
  
When the light faded, John was on the floor, Azazel hovering over him with his hand to his neck, pinning him on the ground. The cement had cracked around them, and Castiel watched as Azazel spun John's angel blade into the palm of his hand.  
  
"Poor John, falling for a human. Poor John, daring to think he could use us for his own little means," Azazel taunted.  
  
"I'll tell you what. I'll keep a spot warm in Hell for you, right next to her," Azazel said, tilting his head, before grinning wide and manic and driving the angel blade dead center into John's chest. Light exploded again, from behind John's eyes and out from his mouth. Castiel turned his face away once more, just before he saw Dean and Sam in the back, being led away from a gap in the circle of flames by none other than Meg.  
  
Scorching heat filled the room and rushed away just as quickly, leaving behind but the sooty mark of wings on the murky floor of the sewers.  
  
Before Castiel could stand Dean was rushing to his side, grabbing his arm to help him stand.  
  
"Are you okay?" he breathed, and Castiel nodded, although dark imprints remained inside his eyelids, every blink fading the color of reality to darkened spots.  
  
"Go," Castiel said, and Dean watched him closely, grit his teeth, and then nodded.  
  
He watched as Dean's back moved away from him and he pulled his sword from his sleeve. Sam joined him, and together they raised their hands, throwing Azazel against the wall with an invisible force and keeping him there, pinned and useless. The demon grasped for his neck as if he was being choked; Castiel saw that Sam and Dean's hands were closing, slowly making fists.  
  
Azazel might have been too strong for one angel, but two was hard to beat.  
  
Castiel swallowed at the sight of them, standing side by side, light emanating from their bodies. Dean and Sam exchanged a look, a nod, and then Dean was grasping his sword properly, and lunging forward.  
  
The sound of the blade piercing flesh and hitting the metal of the piped wall left a mark on Castiel like the light emanating from John had, and he collapsed on the floor, hitting his dislocated shoulder, causing everything around the edges to fade and his vision spotted black.

 


	10. Chapter Ten

It was hard enough to parse through all that had gone on when Dean was almost too stunned himself.  
  
The blast of John's grace expiring replayed behind his eyelids when he blinked and it carved a knot of guilt into his chest every damn time he thought about it; ignoring it wasn’t an option, not now. He'd taken Cas home as soon as he'd seen him fall to the ground, and Sam had promised that he and Meg would handle the rest of the demons. True to his word, all of the demons were either exorcised or dead by the time Cas woke up with a shoulder back in place and demanded a full explanation that sounded only slightly distressed.  
  
John had been working with the demons, Dean told him. John had bartered the demon tablet in exchange for the demons' help in acquiring the angel tablet. The _plot_ Dean couldn't grasp, but the _reason_ he could — Mary Campbell, a human woman. John had fallen in love with her, which was enough of a problem, but he couldn't bear the thought of her passing on eventually and going to her own heaven, separated from him. So John had tried to get his hands on the angel tablet to find a bypass. The only thing that Dean didn't tell Cas was that he could understand, on some level or another.  
  
When he looked over at Castiel, parsing through all of this new information with his lips pressed together and his brows furrowed, Dean thought that he could understand it very well, actually.  
  
Sam appeared in the living room not long after and informed them that Meg had bowed out, stating that Crowley would definitely want to be filled in. Her exact words, Sam reported, were "if he doesn't hear _everything_ about this, he'll shank me, so you be listening out for my SOS, goody-two-shoes."  
  
Neither Dean nor Castiel could stay still, the two of them walking around aimlessly. Sam was the only one of them that managed to stay in one place, and that was only because he was so intent on relaying the events over angel radio. The apartment felt too small, even after Sam took his leave and said goodbye. Neither of the angels wanted to talk to the other about the recent events. Neither of them wanted to process that John had used them and probably would have let them die.  
  
Eventually, Dean asked to stay.  
  
"Not for very long," he was quick to try and add after the fact. "Just for a while." To make sure Castiel was safe and keep him disconnected from the rest of the supernatural world that threatened his life and the concept of returning to said life as he'd known it. Dean wasn't ready to go back to Heaven and mourn the loss of one of their own with all of his family that he hadn't faced in so long.  
  
Of course they both knew that Castiel returning to his old life, blissfully ignorant, was impossible. But all of this went unsaid, buried underneath silences that felt heavier than any real weight could have ever been.  
  
"You can stay as long as you want," Cas assured him without asking any questions, and that was the end of that.  
  
And so stay Dean did; watching over Castiel had become too much of a habit for him to drop all of a sudden. He hadn't been reassigned yet, and he told himself that he wouldn't be disappointed when his leash was shortened and pulled back to HQ. Castiel needed a return to normalcy, and if he stuck around, it was just going to keep Cas from being able to do exactly that.  
  
It was an unfortunate situation. Dean was consistently reminded of how attached he was to him.  
  
He couldn't fathom wanting to go. All he knew was that he desperately _did not want_ to leave this human who had so easily enraptured him. Dean wasn't able to face all that had arisen with John's death, and so he sought peace with Castiel's company. The angel that the prophet needed had become the prophet that _the angel_ needed, and Dean didn't know how to say that, either. So he didn't.  
  
Maybe Cas didn't really need him there; maybe Dean was just another thing taking up the already constricting space inside of the apartment. But Castiel wasn't complaining, and Dean wasn't going to up and wing away after already requesting the exact opposite. Every glance Cas sent his way was heavy and fleeting, and Dean knew in their silence there were questions that needed to be addressed.  
  
As Castiel slept that night, Dean stayed stoically in place next to his bed, seated at the foot of it, watching over him.  
  
"Do you know how to scramble eggs?" was the first thing out of Castiel's mouth the next morning, and as soon as Dean shook his head, Cas put a pan in his hand and shoved him in front of the stove for a lesson in cooking a go-to breakfast. Dean picked up on it with an ease Cas apparently found frustrating, because Dean looked up from his second batch and found Castiel staring at him with an intensity that forced him to drop his gaze first with the excuse _they'd be overdone_ waiting on his tongue if Castiel demanded to know why.  
  
The rest of the day was spent looking through television channels and eating chips straight from the bag. There wasn’t a lot of talking, or too much more looking at each other.  
  
The next day was the day Castiel decided to teach Dean to fry bacon but Dean surprised him by grinning, stealing the pan and the bacon, and cooking it to a flawless crisp.  
  
"You _can_ cook," Castiel said with thinly-veiled appreciation, and Dean hid his smile by turning his attention to the bacon.  
  
"You'd be surprised at what all I can do," he said with a slight smirk. Dean couldn't help looking up to catch the expression on Castiel's face and their eyes met, a long moment passing before Cas was the first to look away, retrieving the eggs from the fridge and shoving them into Dean's arms.  
  
"Then you're making breakfast.

 

* * *

  
  
Another day passed without discussing how long Dean was going to stay — and more importantly without discussing what they were going to do about each other. Every time they had a conversation, it tapered off until they were both awkwardly unsure of what to say, how to word it, until neither of them said anything at all.  
  
They were on their fourth day together when it grew to be unavoidable.  
  
"You're going to work?"  
  
Castiel's eyes settled on Dean as he rifled through the clothes he was picking for his return to work. Dean had _known_ staying here would interrupt the whole back-to-normal thing, but he couldn't help himself from saying something, sprawled out on his stomach atop Cas' bed.  
  
"Yes," Cas said patiently, a question mark almost hanging in the air after the drawn-out syllable. "I'm sure my absence has been missed."  
  
"You couldn't help it," Dean said immediately, and now Castiel was staring at him. "S'not your fault."  
  
"I have to go back at some point," Cas slowly said. Dean caught the double meaning there, the _you have to go back at some point too_. Dean didn't know which to respond to, so he settled for both.  
  
"But not yet."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Dean blinked. Castiel seemed ready to say more, but Dean cut him off.  
  
"You can let yourself relax for a while, Cas, you don't have to jump right back into things," he started, and it sounded more like he was pleading than it did anything else. Cas' jaw tightened even as his expression softened.  
  
"When does a week turn into a month, Dean?" Castiel set the shirt he was holding down onto his dresser, crossing his arms in front of him resolutely. "When does that month turn into three more? The longer I procrastinate this, the less chance there is that I'll ever be able to convince myself that I _can_ relax. That it's really over."  
  
"Are _we_?" Dean asked with a hoarse voice before he could stop himself. Cas inhaled sharply.  
  
"I hope not," he finally said, quiet, and Dean let himself drop his tense pose.  
  
Castiel went to work.  
  
Dean did not. Instead he visited Benny and got a hug.

 

* * *

  
  
The sixth day marked Dean's call back to Heaven.  
  
Charlie was the one to tell him. Castiel was at work again, making up for lost time, and Dean was alone sifting through reruns of various reality television shows.  
  
She took her time, but they both knew what she really came to say. They sat on the couch together and Dean informed her of the slush that her brain would become should she ever watch a _Jersey Shore_ marathon; _however,_ sometimes it was okay to watch the various excerpts that appeared on _The Soup_ , but only sometimes. He gave her both barbeque potato chips and salt-and-vinegar potato chips and she liked the barbeque best, a decision which Dean awarded with a high-five.  
  
"You know..." she began, finally, while a commercial break was on.  
  
"I know," Dean said.  
  
"You did good, Dean. You're not going to be punished for saving people," Charlie insisted. "Sam's trying to keep his distance, they wanted him to get you to come back, but he told them no."  
  
"Good for him," Dean noted, and Charlie nodded her agreement. "You got stuck with it then?"  
  
"Sort of." Dean looked at her curiously. She continued, unabashed. "I kinda volunteered? I knew you'd take it best from me, outside of Sam, so... here I am. And now that I _am_ here, I can see why you don't want to leave."  
  
Dean's eyes drifted towards the door without his permission and Charlie pursed her lips together.  
  
"Or, almost see why. Guess your real reason's not here right now, huh?"  
  
Dean puffed out a strained breath of laughter. "He didn't even wait a week before he went back to helping everyone out in whatever ways he could."  
  
"Look," Charlie sighed. "Far be it from _me_ to tell you what to do, but I'm just passing on the message. They want you home. I do too, but if it's not your choice, it won't even be home anymore."  
  
Charlie stood up, tucking a long red strand of hair behind her ear, and then she smiled.  
  
"I'll tell everyone you said hi," she offered as a parting message, and Dean's frown broke into the smallest of smiles back at her attempt at staying upbeat.  
  
"No need," he said. "I'll be there tomorrow."  
  
Charlie's brows came together into concerned expression, lips tilting downwards. "Are you sure? I can buy you some time, tell them that there's business keeping you late —"  
  
"I have to go back at some point."

 

* * *

 

 

When Cas came home later, Charlie was gone and Dean was sitting on the couch as if nothing had happened, save for the decimation of the potato chip population of the apartment.  
  
Dean didn't tell him first thing.  
  
"How was work?"  
  
"The usual. No demons."  
  
"Not funny."  
  
"I wasn't trying to be." A smile from Cas. Dean hadn't thought it was possible but he didn't want to tell him even _more_ now. His face must have said so for him because Cas squinted at him like he was trying to puzzle him apart and promptly turned to Dean more fully. "What's going on?"  
  
"I'm leaving." Dean cleared his throat, looking away. "Tomorrow."  
  
There was silence and then Castiel said, " _oh_ ", and Dean said "sorry," really fast like that would ease the way he'd ripped it off like a band-aid and Cas said, "no, no — you have to," and before knew it somehow he was standing and Cas was only a breath away and Dean really, _really_ did not want to leave him, now or ever.  
  
Dean kissed him even though he knew he shouldn't have, and Cas kissed him back, gentle at first, edged with desperation that quickly grew into all that it was. The _please don't go_ that kept Castiel's lips feverish was so bittersweet that Dean couldn't help but grab his shirt and pull him closer and kiss him. There was no reason Cas should have had a right to ask Dean to stay, and so it went unvoiced; but Dean wished he would, Dean wanted so much for him to ask him to stay.  
  
Because maybe then he could say yes, and he wouldn't have to go at all.  
  
" _Dean_ ," Cas breathed between one kiss and another.  
  
"I want to stay," Dean said unbidden, and the words tumbled out like an avalanche. "I don't wanna go, Cas, I don't want to leave, I _can't_ —"  
  
Cas' hands were on either side of his face and Dean knew he had to go, he had to leave his charge who'd grown to be so much more, but looking back at Cas only let Dean read what he already knew in Castiel's gaze.  
  
He had to go, and he would go. He would leave tomorrow no matter what was said or done about it because he had a duty and because it would weigh heavy on his conscience otherwise. He would leave and he'd look back but it would be a terrible thing as much as it was a blessing, and he would go on with whatever they asked him to do, because he was _Dean_ , and it was his _responsibility_.  
  
"Take off your stupid jacket," Cas said.  
  
Dean shrugged it off of one shoulder and then the other, tossing the leather jacket over the back of the couch and turning back to Cas with a stare that refused to keep from lingering. Castiel's decision was clear in his eyes and Dean quirked a melancholy kind of smile, corner of his mouth tilting up.  
  
"What, we're doing that demonstration now?" he asked. Cas pursed his lips thoughtfully.  
  
"It seems fitting," Castiel said with a voice that just barely gave away the sad acceptance he felt. Dean couldn't exactly argue with that. "Don't tell me _you're_ not up for it."  
  
Dean's answer came in the form of unbuttoning his jeans and Cas didn't wait a second longer before letting his shirt meet Dean's jacket on the back of the couch; after a beat, he seemed to think better of the location. Dean struggled with his jeans lagging at his knees as he kept pace with Cas, who had apparently become really good at walking backwards at some point in his life because they only stopped kissing once Cas hit the door and started fumbling with the handle.  
  
"Having problems?"  
  
"If you'd move your elbow I might be able to get to it easier."  
  
The door opened when Dean subtly flicked a finger to unjam it but Cas still had all of his weight on it — which resulted in Cas falling backwards and Dean falling forwards in an incredibly undignified tangle of limbs before Cas' legs bumped into the side of the bed and Dean muttered, "whoops," at the highly entertaining expression that greeted him after they'd finally managed to stop fucking up each other's center of gravity.  
  
"You're the clumsiest heavenly being I've ever met," Cas said with no small amount of exasperation, but Dean caught the amused undertone and pressed his lips against Castiel's to keep up the appearance of disgruntled acceptance.  
  
"Shut up and get naked," he said when he pulled back, and Cas gave a resounding _not yet_ with his hands in Dean's hair and his mouth sealed to the angel's. Not yet, not yet, they had such little time together, Dean couldn't bear to have Heaven's leash wrench him back into the clouds, and he couldn't afford to waste this time with Cas. He wanted to get as much out of it as he could, and Castiel had to feel the same, or he wouldn't be taking it so slow now that they'd gotten where they needed to be.  
  
This was a long time coming, if Dean thought about it.  
  
But he didn't, because Cas' tongue was a lot less sharp when he wasn't scolding Dean and was instead making full use of the angel's lips parting so readily against his. He didn't think about it when Castiel's nose bumped into his and Dean tilted his head to allow for a better angle, one that wouldn't keep Cas from being able to breathe. The look he got when Castiel pulled back to stare at him for the action was satisfying, and Dean kissed the side of Cas' jaw, slowly working his way up towards his ear.  
  
"How's it feel, getting touched by an angel," Dean murmured before puffing out a brief spell of laughter just for the swat his shoulder got in reply.  
  
"I _still_ don't understand how _you're_ supposed to be an angel," Cas said, using his foot to push Dean's pants down further until Dean could step out of them, working his shoes off while he was at it too. For a moment it was quiet outside of their shared breaths, Dean's face hidden against Cas' neck, Cas stroking his fingers through Dean's hair.  
  
"I can take you higher than Heaven, baby," Dean crooned, and Castiel bit his earlobe.  
  
"I'm going to miss you," Cas breathed next to Dean's ear, and Dean paused where he was unbuttoning Cas' jeans. "You and your stupid jokes, cheesy pick-up lines. All of it. All of you."  
  
Dean didn't say anything back at first, but got the button through and didn't bother pulling the jeans down. He just propped himself up on his hands over Castiel, words tied up in his mouth until they were impossible to say but edged at the tip of his tongue, waiting, begging to be put out in the air. Still, all he could think of to say was _sorry_.  
  
"Should I —" Stop, leave now, keep from making it worse?  
  
Cas took his face between his hands and pulled Dean back down, kissed him soft with love everywhere they touched; Dean opened up to it, parted his lips, eyes shut, sighed into Cas' mouth and didn't ever want to stray from this. He'd gotten a little higher up over Cas earlier while getting his jeans off, it shouldn't have been a surprise to Dean when Cas hooked a leg around him and flipped them so he was sitting on the top of Dean's legs.  
  
"No," Cas said immediately, and did _that one thing_ with his hips that made Dean's hands fall to either side of Castiel's waist and pull him down closer, further against him.  
  
Dean hooked his fingers into either side of Cas' jeans, wrenched them down over his ass so Cas could shuck them off with a careless shove of his hands, never once taking his eyes off of Dean; Dean admired him for the ability to multitask. As soon as Cas had kicked away the pants and pulled both Dean's and his own underwear off with hardly a glance, Dean was grabbing at him, sliding to the side and getting horizontal on the bed, barely avoiding tumbling off the side.  
  
Castiel kissed him, kissed his lips and jaw and cheeks and neck; Dean's hands found his shoulderblades and stayed riveted in the notches and dips of Cas' spine, a bump-valley pattern that kept his fingers from sliding when teeth grazed over his throat, never threatening, only exploring.  
  
It was a welcome, if at first awkward, action, when Dean arched his back at the exact same time that Castiel decided to press his hips down again, and getting the rhythm together felt like it took far too long — "move to the right, no, stop, don't give me that look" — but once they managed to find the right way to go about it, words weren't the only things coloring the air. Dean discovered that Castiel's breaths turned shuddery and then into panting when he rolled his hips a little early, met him as he was moving the tiniest bit back; in return, Dean dropped curses like they were weightless if Cas was a little more _insistent_ with it.  
  
Cas suddenly pushed away before the pressure low in Dean's stomach built up too much to bear, and he moved down Dean's body, pressing kisses across the inside of his thighs. Dean held his breath, propped himself up on an elbow until Cas' eyes met his and a hand reached up to Dean's shoulder, urging him back until Dean relented and dropped down again to watch the top of Cas' head go lower.  
  
Dean didn't actually string together a line of expletives like he wanted to when Cas' mouth went over the tip of his cock, the wet warmth of Cas' tongue pressing against the side of Dean's length pulling a groan out of him. He couldn't _really_ help that he tried to push up into Cas' mouth more as soon as Castiel moved his head up again, or when Cas wrapped his fingers around the rest of Dean's length that he couldn't quite get his mouth around, despite his best efforts. And Dean couldn't really help that he breathed Cas' name again and then again after that, with Cas's palm sliding over his spit-slick cock, Cas kissing the slit where precome was beading, Cas licking it up like he'd be happier doing nothing else.  
  
"Fuck," Dean said dazedly, but his voice shot up an octave as Cas chose that moment to take Dean into his mouth again, this time sucking and making Dean's fingers dig into the sheets.  
  
Cas pulled off of him right before Dean was going to tumble over the edge of orgasm, and Dean had to push his heels into the mattress as he gave Cas a desperate stare. Cas, who was looking _pretty damn great_ — and it wasn't just his protesting arousal that was talking thanks to the grip Castiel had on his dick still keeping him from coming.  
  
"I swear, Cas, if you stopped just to ask me to do one of the positions _Cosmo_ recommended," Dean started. Somehow Cas managed to snort between little intakes of air and pushed himself away from Dean using both hands, an unfortunate loss, but one Dean didn't have time to mourn with the lips that met his neck. "I flipped through it, but I didn't _seriously_ read it."  
  
Castiel seemed to be thoughtful with the way he was kissing across Dean's shoulders, then his chest, but Dean kept on, insistent, his pride at stake.  
  
"I only flipped through it to find that quiz, too, I had to have something to talk to you about that didn't scream _cultist psycho_ , right? It made sense at the time — _ah_ , shit — okay, maybe I glanced through the red carpet section. _Maybe_."  
  
He knew Cas was laughing because of how his shoulders shook the slightest bit and how he didn't bother with the rest of the kisses, just hid his face against the crook of Dean's neck, but there was nothing to be said about it. Dean weathered it in silence, _almost_ smiling, fighting it until he couldn't anymore and he gave up, burying his face in the mess he'd made of Cas' hair.  
  
"I didn't stop to ask you that," Cas said before leaning back to fix his gaze on Dean's, open, questioning. Dean didn't say anything, just looked up at him with a quirk to his expression until Castiel squirmed a little to resituate himself — which didn't help the not-quite-forgotten heat just waiting for the right spark to make it unbearable again, but the slow kisses had made it easier for the moment, and Dean had to guess that'd been the intention — and continued. "As much as I would love to hear about who's dating who in Hollywood, are we going to have sex or not?"  
  
Dean pursed his lips. "What I said still applies. No Cosmo positions." He rolled his eyes at the snort Cas gave in response, following Castiel's movements as he reached towards the bedside table and rifled through the contents of the drawer. Lube was dropped onto Dean's chest and the angel gave the small bottle an appreciative look as he picked it up. "Convenient."  
  
"You could have always fetched some," Cas pointed out while Dean popped the cap open and squeezed some onto the palm of his hand, dripping some of it onto his torso and ignoring that. "What do you want?"  
  
"You." Dean sat up, pecked Cas on the lips lightly as he reached down and wrapped slippery fingers around Castiel's cock, reveling in the inhale that he got out of it.

Dean kissed him again, twisting his wrist when he moved his hand up, and Cas puffed out another sound, lower; it didn't keep Dean from tugging again so he could smooth lube everywhere it had to be — maybe this part was more encouragement, _enticement_ , than anything else, a handjob just slow enough not to get Cas too close but still good. Still contact, still touch, still a trust there that both participants knew _worked_.

Shit. _Shit_. Leaving this behind wasn't going to fly, it wouldn't work out for him, he'd just have to stay, come up with some excuse — _hey, Codec, can't really float on up there, got more important things to worry about_ —  
  
Castiel suddenly interrupted his thoughts with a "Don't, Dean", and then Dean's back was on the mattress again and Cas had gotten his hands on the lube, that blessed little thing, at some point, because next thing Dean knew there were gentle hands with lube-covered fingers rearranging his legs and pushing them apart until he had to spread them and Cas looked up at him and asked, "Can I," and Dean could only nod eagerly, once, twice.  
  
The first finger that slid inside was slow, careful; Dean was _an angel_ , and not one of those shitty fragile porcelain figurines of angels, but a soldier, so he hooked a leg around Cas' back and glared daggers to get the message across.  
  
Cas crooked his finger in reply. Dean groaned at both the stretch-burn and the stirrings of pleasure.  
  
The second one was easier, better because its fullness was constant but ebbing depending on how Cas twisted his fingers, and Dean urged Cas on with _yes_ and _please_ and _keep going_ or _give me a second_ because yeah, he was the angel here, and feeling wasn't so much feeling as making himself feel, but he was still in a body that wasn't yet _accustomed_.  
  
Dean's hand rested in Cas' hair, stroked through it softly except for when he didn't and even then he was quick to correct himself, stop himself from grabbing so tight with a muttered apology, but Cas finally just moved up to kiss Dean openmouthed, murmuring, "It's fine, Dean," when he leaned away just enough to speak. His hand stayed where his fingers could push in, could spread and make Dean tense and relax and breathe funny all in one go. He stroked over Dean's prostate almost by accident, or maybe he'd been waiting so he could watch Dean's face when he did, because Dean said " _Oh_ ," and Castiel did it again until Dean gave a shaky "fuck, _Cas_." Third finger and another touch of just that right spot and Dean grabbed Cas and pulled him down, kissed him until Cas was the one gasping for air, and Dean gave the go ahead.  
  
"I don't need anything else, Cas, c'mon."  
  
Castiel exhaled and moved back and Dean inhaled and said "Wait," and flipped over, turned so that he was on his stomach with his knees underneath him and yeah, only reason he was still hard was maybe abuse of some angel mojo, because prepping wasn't exactly the greatest, but Cas had been _so careful_ like he thought it was just as intimate and important as Dean knew it had to be, just wouldn't say it out loud. Dean didn't know how he'd functioned before Cas. He'd just wandered, never wanted to actually settle for anything, content to move and see and discover things he'd already known.  
  
He _knew_ this but he hadn't _known_ it.  
  
"Good?" Cas asked, and Dean said, "Yeah, yeah, m'great."  
  
Dean had thought that the position would be nice. Or, he figured as much, he wasn't oblivious; he'd been watching humanity and, being a part of the whole of it for centuries, laughed at those that condemned _sex_ of all things. It was a gift freely given and freely taken, if that was your kinda thing. He was more than schooled in anatomy, too, all that _tab A goes into slot B_ junk.  
  
But he hadn’t _felt_ it.  
  
He made the kind of punched-out-rough-breathy noise people only do when there's relief and a little bit of pain to go along with it, but the heat bowled it over pretty fast until pleasure won out. Dean was pushing back against every roll of Cas' hips as soon as he'd kick-started his nerves again, which he shouldn't have had to do, but hey, he was kind of busy being stunned about how _good_ it was to have Cas inside of him.  
  
Bottom line was that the angle was fucking fantastic, but that was the only good thing about it.  
  
Dean kept wondering what Cas felt, wondering what he looked like, and _geez_ , seriously, just wanting to see his face. He actually really did _miss_ being able to see his face, which was just about the most unashamedly sappy thing that'd ever crossed his mind. He couldn't help it which made it worse because then he got all confused and slightly upset in the dumbest of ways, and it was only soothed a little bit when Castiel pressed his front completely to Dean's back and moved up into him slowly. Teeth and lips both found Dean's neck and he tilted his head; Dean tried to catch Cas' mouth while his fingers gripped the pillow underneath his head. If the pillow had feelings somewhere, it was probably really pissed at the frustration Dean was taking out on it.  
  
" _Fuck_ this," Dean said with conviction, and then he maneuvered out from underneath Cas just enough to turn over onto his back again. After he took in the blue-ringed-pupils looking down at him with no small amount of emotion, they promptly started right up again, Cas pushing more comfortably into Dean, even if it wasn't the same shock of warmth every time.  
  
"I was just about to say something," Castiel told him and Dean grinned, pressing his nose into the crook of his shoulder. He dropped a kiss to Cas' neck and licked a line up to his jaw, panted hot breaths there as one hand slipped from Cas' back and Dean fisted his own length until one of Cas' hands knocked his out of the way and took his place.  
  
It was so easy not to think, so easy to run a hand through Cas' hair and kiss him everywhere he could reach. It was easy to focus on the feeling of skin-on-skin and precious, lingering touches, easy to say, "Cas, _fuck_ ," and easy to hear Cas reply, " _Dean_ ," both at once like a curse and caress. And Dean was all but reduced to breathlessness, eyes closed, choked up gasps made of fire escaping, words slipping through the lips, past the tongue that slurred them.  
  
"Don't let me leave, don't let me go."  
  
Cas made a ruined noise that sounded suspiciously like "I won't, Dean, I won't," against Dean's cheek, and the stubble there rubbed rough on his skin, clarity in the hazy fog of want — Dean drew in one last, sharp breath, clutched his fingers in Cas' hair and tensed up before his orgasm took him down, making him give trembling, broken pants for air that were wet and shaking, his heart breaking and mending at the same time.  
  
Castiel's final moan of _Dean_ reached his ears and Dean pulled him close, grabbed aimlessly at Cas until their legs were tangled and Cas was buried deep and Dean kissed him, messy and careless and loving. Cas came with an _exposed_ sound, right into Dean's mouth; and Dean tangled his fingers through Cas' hair while Cas came down, ran his hands down his back and went up again to loop fingers behind his neck, hasty kisses melting into a long, slower meeting of their lips. Cas dropped and then he was laying on top of Dean, sweat-sticky skin and come mixed to make a really gross feeling on Dean's stomach, but somehow all he could think to do was _keep kissing him_.  
  
They stayed like that for a while; Dean didn't keep track, Cas didn't look at a clock. The curtains kept the room dark, soft-lit and quiet. Cas ended up underneath Dean and Dean began tenderly pressing his lips across Cas' chest, his neck, shoulders, face. Anywhere he could reach. Another moment after and it was a whispered conversation, like neither of them wanted to break such a careful balancing act between Dean's presence and Dean's absence.  
  
"You should shower," Dean said. "You've got jizz on you."  
  
" _We_ should shower," corrected Cas. "We both have jizz on us."  
  
"Sure. I mean, some of it's in hard to reach places."  
  
Dean knew he was using the shower as an excuse to stay longer. Cas knew too, but only gave him a glance, didn't say anything. Water dripped down Dean's nose once they were in there and Cas insisted on having Dean wash his hair since he'd been so intent on having his hands all in it earlier. After Dean finished getting the soap out of Cas' hair, he moved down, and down further still, and proceeded to prove to him that angels did not, in fact, have a gag reflex.  
  
When they curled back up underneath the covers that weren't completely wrecked, Dean never said goodbye, and Cas never asked him to say it. He was exhausted, Dean knew just by looking at him, and he pressed his face into Cas' damp hair.  
  
"You won't be here when I wake up," Cas asked like it was a statement.  
  
"No," Dean mumbled, strands of hair tickling his lips and nose, "I won't."  
  
Castiel pulled back enough to rest a hand on Dean's face and he bumped their foreheads together until their noses brushed. Dean closed his eyes, leaned into the palm covering his cheek, brows furrowing tautly across his forehead. Dean breathed out a sigh after a few beats, opened his eyes again to see Cas still staring at him.  
  
"You won't have any nightmares now," Dean whispered.  
  
Not because he was there, but because it was over, all of it. Everything was finished, Cas' work was _done_.  
  
And when Cas fell asleep, head tucked into the crook of Dean's neck, arms looped around him, leg thrown over Dean's and the other caught between both of his, Dean still didn't want to go.  
  
Dean waited as long as he could, but Castiel still woke up to an empty bed.


	11. Epilogue

Dean blinked and found himself in Castiel's apartment.  
  
That wasn't such a bad thing though. In fact, it was a very good thing. So good that it helped Dean recover from the dizzy flash of white-and-black fuzz that came with his eyes refocusing. It was a sensation he wasn't used to, and Dean steadied himself with an arm out to the side as compensation. His breath came out in a loud huff from his nostrils, and he closed his eyes for a moment longer to regain his ability not to vomit.  
  
Both of the tablets, now that Dean thought about it, still weren't in anyone's possession; he'd been put in charge of the search party for the past couple of weeks since he was already so experienced when it came to roaming Earth, but after his productivity hit all new levels of low and Charlie and Sam staged an intervention, he was happy to be relocated. Again. Back to his former charge, and definitely his last one.  
  
Listening to the sounds that came from the kitchen assisted in helping his jumpy mind, and the smell of bacon was an added plus. Walking was surprisingly simple after being away from Earth for the last couple of weeks, and Dean kept a silent approach as he stepped through Castiel's apartment, around a blanket that was tossed over the couch and hanging off haphazardly, like someone had just thrown it down in frustration after being curled up. Peeking into the kitchen awarded him the sight of a dark head of hair turned away from him, and Dean snuck in, snagged a piece of bacon from right underneath Cas' arm, and proceeded to eat it.  
  
Castiel spun around and they were chest-to-chest in a heartbeat, stares locked on each other. The sound of ice settling in the glass of water Cas had set out for himself sounded brittle in the silence that was so thin already, and Dean didn't dare break it.  
  
"I thought you left for good," Cas blurted with a voice that trembled ever so slightly at the last syllable. The tiny shake in his tone was enough to shake Dean's core and he paused, quickly finishing off the bacon in his mouth so that he could speak.  
  
"I did," he admitted, mouth turning up at one corner hopefully. "But I'm back."  
  
Cas was silent. Dean swallowed again, though this time his mouth was empty.  
  
"I came back," he added softly.  
  
"You did," Cas said, finally taking the moment to blink.  
  
And then there were lips crushed up against his, mouths sealed together in an I-miss-you-don't-leave-again sort of way, all teeth scraping painfully against teeth — that was _new_ — and noses bumping hard in a repeat of their first kiss, but this time it was Cas who made the first move. Dean had never known what kissing was like when one needed to breathe; he had to tilt his head seconds into the kiss to get proper air in his lungs, his hands slipping behind Cas to pull him close, lips seeking further and further purchase. Castiel's arms dropped over Dean's shoulders then around his neck and it was with little effort on Castiel's part that he pushed Dean back into the corner of the wall, making Dean give a muffled "ow" from between desperate kisses.  
  
The surprise at Dean giving away that it hurt was apparently enough to keep Castiel from continuing because he pulled back to look at Dean, gaze flickering from his eyes to his lips.

"Something's different," Castiel breathed, ignoring the sink that dripped water into the bowl that was already full. Dean shrugged.  
  
"Um, I got a tan? Heaven's closer to the sun 'n all —"  
  
"No, no," interrupted Cas, frowning. He even pulled away further, making Dean catch his waist just in case he decided that he was ending this little reunion. He wanted Castiel close. He had been gone for too long. Just a couple weeks, and he'd missed him like it'd been years. "You've — I don't know, I can't..." His tongue flicked out to run over his lips, and at first Dean thought he was wetting them but then he realized Castiel was _tasting_ for something.  
  
Fuck if he knew what.  
  
"Oh." Dean cleared his throat, rubbing little presses of his thumbs into Cas' hips. "Heaven, uh, did me a favor. While I was up there."  
  
"Did you get a some sort of promotion?" Castiel said slowly, like the words themselves pained him to say. Like he was asking _are you going to have to leave again, was this just you stopping to say goodbye?_  
  
" _Nooot_ so much."  
  
Cas just looked at him, but his shoulders dropped from their tense position.  
  
"I'm human now?" Dean supplied helpfully, and Castiel shouted, " _what?!_ "  
  
Castiel put his hands on Dean's chest and pushed back from him until he could look him over as if he wasn't really sure what to do, bewilderment written all over his expression. Bewilderment, not rejection, and Dean breathed an inner sigh of relief for that. He didn't know what he'd do if Cas told him that he didn't, wouldn't, want him now. Now that he wasn't this supernatural enigma, now that he was just...  
  
Dean. He was just _Dean_.  
  
"It's fine, Cas, I picked it, I chose it." Dean stumbled over his words, tried again if only to quell that panicky expression Cas wore. "They said — they said I'd done good, and it was great up there, I did _good_ , I was garrison leader for all of a week, but I can't _have_ a desk job, I gotta be out in the field, and I figured, hey, what's more out in the field than being a part of the field —"  
  
Cas shut him up with another kiss, this one brief and gentle, meant to stop him from rambling for the next five minutes of their time together.  
  
"— and... staying here," Dean finished, face so close to Castiel's that his nose brushed the tip of Cas' when he just slightly tilted his head down further. "For good."  
  
"Staying _here_ ," Cas clarified, voice gentle.  
  
Here, like Earth. Here, like Cas' apartment. With Cas inside of it, preferably. Definitely. Hopefully. Dean gave a quick nod.  
  
"I think," Castiel finally said after Dean had fidgeted enough and pushed further indentations of the wall into his back, "that can be arranged."  
  
Dean's grin spread slow across his face and Castiel slid his hands from behind Dean to clasp his face between his palms, looking him straight in the eye as the smile spread to his expression too. It was a warmth even better than his grace that seeped through Dean's veins, pooling in his heart and taking up a place there. He thought it might never leave, and he'd be okay with that. Thousands of years learning to imitate humans, and now he had a lifetime to learn to _be_ human.  
  
And this time he had a teacher.  
  
Dean kissed him, and Castiel's fingers threaded through his hair to tilt his head just so. That way, he could keep their noses from bumping — _finally_ — while their lips moved together, slow and soft and laced with all of the love that there could be in such a simple action that gave so much.  
  
"Welcome home," Cas told him with a voice filled with affection, lips brushing against Dean's with each word.  
  
Much later, after they reacquainted themselves with the taste and feel and _everything_ of one another, Dean slid out of bed to get a glass of water. Thirst was new to him and when it gripped him it was sharp. He stumbled on the coffee table, his vision no longer what it had once been, his body now prone to mishaps and the awkward clumsiness of humanity; something fell from it with a _thump_ , and Dean reached down to pick it up.  
  
It was a book of poetry, well loved by the looks of it. One of the pages was folded inside and Dean flipped to it, rubbing at his sleep ridden eyes before blinking to read the words on the page.  
  
 _What_  
 _falls_  
 _for_  
 _love_  
 _and_  
 _who_  
 _falls_  
 _for_  
 _it?_  
  
The words rang with him more than anything he'd ever read, and now he understood the poetry humanity had written over the years that had left him amused but unconvinced. Now he knew the power the words could hold, the meaning they could be given by one's own experience, and his heart beat hard in his chest.  
  
He stood with the book in his hands and the words in his mind for a while, his thumb stroking the page as he felt something he couldn't explain or define.  
  
But when he closed the book and put it down with care, he was smiling.

 


End file.
